


Winter Soldier's Redemption

by Selenay



Series: Dangerous Instruments [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Edwardian Period, M/M, Marvel Cameos, Prequel, Putting Bucky Back Together, Rediscovered Feelings, Reunions, Slight Mentions of Body Horror, Steve Rogers Feels, Trope Bingo Round 3, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers, former captain of the <em>HMAS America</em>, had been a rising star of the Royal Aerial Fleet until his airship was destroyed. He was pulled from the wreckage, the only survivor, and spent several weeks unconscious in a hospital bed while the world, and the Fleet, moved on without him. Now, he needs a new plan and a new career, both of which Nick Fury is willing to offer as part of his special SHIELD unit inside Scotland Yard.</p><p>But while Steve waits to begin his training, Fury has a small mystery he needs some help with. A masked man has been roaming the towns and villages in the south of England, stealing food and breaking into trains and museums without taking anything of value. A man with a metal arm. It's Steve's home ground, the place he grew up in, so he's the perfect choice to investigate Fury's problem. Isn't he?</p><p>(Prequel fic, but can be read as a stand-alone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [chaneen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chaneen/pseuds/chaneen) for doing stellar beta work on this monster. All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> When I posted Clockwork Murders, one of the questions I was asked a lot was where Steve and Bucky fitted into the universe. This fic is the answer to that question. I've been assured that it works as a stand-alone, but there are a few tiny Easter Eggs dotted around for Dangerous Instruments readers. Hope you guys enjoy the 40k answer to such a tiny question :-D
> 
> The poster by melifair1 is [here](http://melifair.tumblr.com/post/100954092265/my-contribution-for-marvel-bang-2014-is-this-movie) and it's gorgeous. Go take a look and let her know how great it is.

_8th August, 1904, over the North Sea_

Sirens blared a warning, and Captain Steve Rogers staggered as the deck shook under him. Metal plating fell from the compartment ceiling and a man screamed, the sound cutting through the alarms. Steve steadied himself against one of the stools bolted to the floor and peered out of the forward window, straining to see what was happening in the air outside their ship.

A huge explosion lit up the night sky. Steve recognised the distinctive shape of the _HMAS Polychrest_ silhouetted against the brightness, before the flames from its huge gas balloon consumed it.

"Damage report!" he shouted, trying to project his voice over the racket filling his bridge.

Jones's face was covered with blood from a cut over his eye, but his voice was steady. "Glancing blow. Engines are still functioning and there are no reports of damage to the envelope."

Someone was finally attending to the screaming man, and he was quieter now, only whimpering softly. Steve glanced down at the map pinned to his command desk. They were still a mile from their target; releasing the ship's payload now would be pointless. The bombs would kill a few seals, but they wouldn't do a damn thing for the tiny island the Wildthorne Air Pirates had been operating from for the last two years. It was the ship yard the fleet had been sent to destroy, not a few harmless birds and fish.

But the island was a mile away, and the British aerial fleet was being cut down by superior airships. How the pirates had been able to mount such a massive force was a question for later. There would be no bombing raid tonight. The best they could hope for now was to get what remained of the Royal Aerial Force's best ships back to friendly skies.

Or at least, that's what Steve would have ordered if he was commander of the fleet. The _HMAS Resolution_ was still in the air somewhere, and Admiral Jeffries hadn't signalled the retreat yet.

Outside, Steve saw another British airship, _HMAS London_ , engaging with the enemy. Strafing fire from a Dreadnought class ship's flame cannons lit up the _London's_ gondola. It would become just another ball of burning gas if someone didn't do something.

"Falsworth, set course to intercept the _London_ ," Steve ordered. "They need our help."

"Aye, sir, setting course," Falsworth said.

The deck tilted slightly under Steve's feet, and the engines roared as they changed direction, heading into the battle at full speed.

Dum Dum Dugan had been working silently at his station since the first pirate ship appeared in the air. Now he moved to Steve's side and, keeping his voice low, said, "Is this a good idea? We're going to get slaughtered out here."

"We have our orders," Steve said. "Until Jones sights a retreat signal, we have to continue."

"You think anyone is going to see a signal lamp out there?" Dum Dum said, waving a hand at the streaks of flame and gun fire that were throwing everything into confusion. "Jeffries could be signalling anything out there and we wouldn't know it."

"Admiral Jeffries hasn't ordered the retreat yet," Steve said. "Until he does, we have to stay at our posts."

Dum Dum pursed his lips unhappily, but he nodded. "Yes, sir. We'll follow orders, even if it's to our grave."

"You're in a good mood today."

"Yeah, I'm always happy when we're being shot out of the sky."

"We haven't been shot down yet." Steve pasted on his most confident smile. "And we might get out of this alive. Load the cannons and get some covering fire started."

Dum Dum's salute was sloppy, but he went back to his station crisply and began tapping out orders to the gun room with a concentrated frown. Steve watched as the _London_ and her opponent grew larger in the window, praying silently that her envelope would hold until they reached her.

They didn't reach her.

A sudden jolt knocked Steve off his feet, and someone shouted a warning, but his ears were ringing and he couldn't hear it. The deck lurched again and his stomach suddenly seemed to be jumping into his throat. They'd been hit by a bomb or rammed, and the ship had taken a fatal wound. They were falling out of the sky, Steve could feel it with every sense he had, and he tried to pull himself to his feet and issue orders, but everything was tilting. He couldn't get a foothold, couldn't do anything except hang onto his command desk, which was now over his head as the ship tumbled through its descent.

The air was hot and smoky. Some of the bags in the envelope must be on fire, though it hadn't exploded yet. Men screamed and shouted. Steve felt something hot and sharp slice the skin along his ribs, and he lost his grip on the desk and slid down the deck.

Falling. Everything was falling and burning.

The _HMAS America_ crashed into the ocean, and Steve didn't know anything more for a long time.

***

Steve woke up in a white room that smelled of bleach.

Someone yelped and dropped something that hit the floor with a metallic clang when he opened his eyes. He tried to turn his head to see who was there with him, but it felt like his head was pinned to the pillow by heavy leaden muscles that wouldn't obey him.

Steve tried to say something, to ask where he was, but all that emerged was a croaky grunt. His throat was too dry and his tongue didn't seem to work right, tangling with his dry, dry teeth.

Oddly, there was no pain. Nothing worked, he couldn't even muster the strength to do more than twitch a finger, but nothing was hurting. He just felt...weak. Weaker than he'd ever felt before, even when he was a child, with muscles that didn't seem to remember what to do or have the power to respond.

A door opened somewhere to his right, and a face loomed over him. A man with horn-rimmed spectacles and a deep frown. Steve tried to speak again, but it came out as a breathy whine.

"He's awake," the stranger said. "He's awake!"

Steve wanted to ask why that seemed to be such a miracle, but his voice didn't work and his tongue didn't work and his _body_ didn't work. He screamed inside his head, while men in white coats and women in nurses' hats poked and prodded at him, and nobody told him anything.


	2. Chapter 2

_3rd April, 1905, London_

Steve followed a young constable down a long hall and up two flights of stairs, somehow managing to keep up even though his legs and lungs were burning. Three months ago, he wouldn't even have made it past the front desk without needing to stop and rest. This morning he'd walked nearly two miles to reach New Scotland Yard under his own power, and he was not going to let a hallway and a few stairs defeat him after that.

He did sink gratefully onto the bench the constable gestured him to when they reached their destination, though. The other man gave him a sympathetic look, and Steve smiled and shrugged.

"I'll see whether Inspector Fury is ready for you," the constable said. "Can I get you a cup of tea while you wait?"

"I suppose that depends on how long Inspector Fury makes me wait," Steve said. "Thank you."

He received another of those sympathetic smiles, before the constable disappeared through the door opposite Steve's bench. It was a plain, wooden door, exactly like all the others on this corridor, and the department name looked freshly painted. 

SHIELD: Strategic Home-office Investigation, Enforcement, and Logistics Department.

The hyphen in "Home Office" made Steve smile again. Someone really wanted those initials to spell something out. He suspected that hadn't been Fury's idea. It sounded more like something a bureaucrat had dreamed up as funding bait for the new commissioner of the Met.

The door opened after only a couple of minutes, and the constable gestured for Steve to follow him inside. From his startled expression, Steve guessed that it was rare for Fury not to make people wait, even when they had appointments. He tried not to let that thought intimidate him, but his stomach still churned uncomfortably as he walked. SHIELD's main office was a large, sparsely decorated room. It had just enough space for a few desks, and there was a huge map of London covering one wall.

The only person working at the moment was a woman at a desk in the far corner. For a moment, Steve thought she might be some kind of clerk, perhaps employed to keep the reports filed correctly.

Then she shifted, and the light caught on silver buttons and emblems on the distinctly military cut of her dark blue jacket. Steve's eyes widened. If he was reading her rank correctly, she was a sergeant.

He paused for a moment, staring, before remembering where he was and hurrying over to the door the constable was waiting next to.

"Is that..?" Steve asked, as quietly as he could.

The constable nodded. "Sergeant Hill. She brought down the Angel Street Gang last year."

"Oh."

Glancing back, Steve caught her watching him for a moment, and he nodded politely. She frowned and bent her head to the papers on her desk again.

The door led into a cramped office dominated by a large desk, which took up almost all the floor space that wasn't covered with filing cabinets. A large window looked out over the street below, and ensured that the man sitting behind the desk was silhouetted against the sunlight streaming in. Steve's eyes watered painfully as he tried to squint into the brightness. There was a low chuckle and the other man pressed something--a button or switch, probably--on the side of his desk. Blinds swept down over the window with a low hiss of steam, dimming the painfully bright sunlight just enough for Steve to be able to face him without squinting.

Steve stood next to the visitor's chair, trying not to clutch his hat so tightly he bent the brim, and met the gaze of the man on the other side of the desk. Detective Inspector Fury was exactly as Steve remembered. He was dressed all in black, even down to his shirt, and the heavy scarring over his missing eye wasn't entirely hidden by his eye patch. He looked nothing like a detective of the Metropolitan Police should.

Of course, he hadn't looked like a respectable military officer should when Steve first met him, either.

"I'll bring tea," the constable said.

Fury's lips twitched into something that might have been a smile, on someone else. "Thank you, Constable Sharp. Captain Rogers will take his with milk and sugar."

Steve waited until Sharp had left and closed the door before saying, "You remembered."

"You made an impression," Fury said. "Sit down before you fall down."

Protests immediately rose to Steve's mouth, but he swallowed them down and sat, because Fury was right. They waited in silence for Sharp to bring tea in two chipped mugs and retreat wordlessly. Steve's tea was too strong, too sweet, and exactly what he needed. He scalded his lips as he drained half the mug.

"So, what brings Captain Steve Rogers of the _HMAS America_ to my office?" Fury asked, narrowing his eye.

Steve cradled the mug between his hands, his hat almost forgotten on his knee. "The _America_ is lying in a hundred pieces at the bottom of the ocean, along with most of the men I led. It's just Steve Rogers, now."

"You'll always be Captain Rogers," Fury said. "You can't escape something you were born to."

"According to the Aerial Fleet, I can," Steve said, trying not to sound bitter. It wasn't their fault, after all. "Turns out, losing a hundred men and lying unconscious in a hospital for two months is enough for a medical discharge. I haven't been Captain Rogers for...a while. You told me once that if I ever needed a job--if I ever left the Aerial Fleet--you'd hire me. Did you mean that?"

"I did," Fury said mildly. "Are you asking for a job?"

"I am."

"Why?"

"The Aerial Fleet pension doesn't stretch far, and I need something useful to do, sir," Steve said, meeting Fury's eye steadily. "I'm not suited to sitting around doing nothing. Too much time to think."

Fury didn't blink for a long, long moment. He was studying Steve with more intensity than any doctor Steve had met since he woke up. It was difficult to keep his gaze locked on Fury's, because Steve had the uncomfortable feeling that Fury was reading everything about him. Every tiny detail, every unhappy thought, all the things Steve wanted to forget; he couldn't hide them from Fury's sight.

"You look like you'd blow over in a strong wind," Fury said eventually.

"I'm getting stronger every day," Steve countered.

"Hmm." Fury's eye narrowed. "You're sure you want to work for me? There are easier ways to make a living. You're barely out of hospital, aren't you? Why not find a nice, safe clerk's job. Didn't you used to draw? Pretty sure there are illustration jobs out there that you'd be more than qualified for. Why this?"

"Same reason I joined the Aerial Fleet," Steve said. He allowed himself to blink, and his eyes watered painfully. "I don't like bullies, and there are always people who need help with that."

"What do you think we do here?"

"I heard you investigate crimes other departments haven't been able to solve."

Fury's smile was sharp and angry. "My department is where everyone who doesn't fit anywhere else gets dumped, and we investigate the weird shit and the bad stuff that nobody else wants to poke their noses into. Think that sounds like your kind of work?"

"It does, sir."

"Huh." Fury took a deep gulp of his rapidly cooling tea. "The next training course won't start for six weeks. If you pass the training, you'll have to spend some time as a uniformed constable before I can bring you into this department. I can bend those rules a lot, but I can't break them."

"I'll pass, sir. I'll make sure of it."

"Do you have anything to do over the next six weeks? Enough money to get by?"

Steve considered his empty pockets and the tiny boarding room he'd been living in for the last couple of months. The rent was due at the end of the week, every week, and he still had a few things he could sell if he had to. "I can manage."

"That's what I thought." Fury opened a drawer and pulled out a thin brown folder. "I've got some discretionary funds. I can pay you a small stipend, if you'll look into this for me."

"What is it?" Steve asked, setting his tea aside and taking the folder to look through it. The first page showed a rough sketch of a man with long, wild hair and a black mask covering the lower half of his face. It had the kinds of filters and grills he'd seen on the masks the Fleet issued in case of gas attacks. "Who is that?"

"They call him the Winter Soldier," Fury said. "Probably because he first appeared in the middle of the winter, I don't know. They say he's got a metal arm, which sounds like the kind of creative bullshit people add to make a ghost story even scarier, but maybe it's true. He's been breaking into museums without taking anything, robbing trains for pennies, and committing every illogical crime possible. There's no pattern, except that he's stayed in one area for the last four months. The local constabulary asked for my help, but I don't have anyone to send at the moment. Unless you go. Poke around for a few weeks, see what you can find out."

"And if I don't find him by the time training starts?"

Fury shrugged. "Then you tried and I can report that you tried, and I can tell the damned Devon Constabulary to do their own dirty work."

"Why do you think I can do it?"

"Because this Winter Soldier is hunting on your home ground," Fury said. "You know the people, you know those villages; you're the best man for this particular job."

"And you'll pay me?"

"A very, _very_ small stipend," Fury said. "Which will go a lot further down there than it will up here in the city."

"I understand," Steve said, glancing down at the sketch again. "I'll take the job."

"I never doubted you would."

***

Steve went home directly from Scotland Yard on an omnibus. He felt slightly guilty for the indulgence, but his legs were still wobbly and he had a long day of travel ahead of him, so the guilt passed quickly.

It only took him a few minutes to shove everything he owned into his old canvas Fleet bag. His landlady sighed loudly and asked where she'd find another reliable tenant with so little notice. He didn't ask her for a refund on the two days of rent he wouldn't be using, even though he suspected she'd have his room rented out by nightfall. Now that he had a plan and a mission, he didn't want to waste time arguing over a few pennies.

He indulged in another omnibus to the station and secured a third class ticket to Exeter on the noon train. The wooden benches were uncomfortable and he was squeezed into a corner by a large family and their luggage, but the time passed quickly as he watched fields and small towns rush past. It wasn't quite the same as flying had been, but he'd forgotten how much he missed moving fast.

From Exeter, he caught a smaller train to Starcross, and then an omnibus to Ainford. It rattled through narrow country lanes, emitting more smoke and steam than Steve suspected it should, and deposited him in the middle of a tiny square, long after the sun had set. Steve was wearily trying to decide between walking the final few miles to his destination, and taking his chances in a doorway, when a horse-drawn cart pulled up next to him.

A grizzled old man raised his lamp and peered down at Steve. "Where are you heading, lad?"

Steve smiled politely. "Duscombe."

"Hop up, then. I'll be going through there, and you look ready to fall on your nose."

"If you're sure..."

"A' course I'm sure," the old man said. "Hop on up. You can keep me company in the dark. Name's Harry Ridham."

Steve clambered up to sit next to Ridham, balancing his canvas bag carefully across his legs. "Steve Rogers. Please to meet you."

Ridham shook his hand before clucking to his horse, urging her into a steady walk. "Rogers? Seem to recall a family by that name used to live in Duscombe. Midwife and her son. She delivered my Betsy's last 'un."

"That was probably my mother," Steve said. "I've been away."

"Aaah. Away." Ridham nodded thoughtfully and lapsed into silence.

They didn't speak again during the drive. The steady clop of the horse's hooves and the swaying motion of the cart were soothing, and Steve slowly felt himself slipping into a half doze. He startled awake once or twice when he started to sag sideways, and Ridham chuckled softly each time. The final time, Steve jerked awake as the cart rolled to a stop with a quiet "whoa, there" from Ridham. Steve blinked sleepily and peered around.

A few lamps marked the main road through the village and provided puddles of light to guide people home. Steve didn't remember them from his childhood. They looked like old-fashioned oil lamps, and Steve guessed Duscombe still hadn't been connected to the gas lines.

"Do you have anywhere in particular to go?" Ridham asked gruffly.

The cart had stopped by the pub, which was the most brightly lit building in the village. Two lamps hung by its doors and several of its windows glowed warmly, sending long beams of light across the village green on the other side of the road. Steve couldn't see the pub's name, hanging from a sign on the corner of the building and out of the light, but he'd seen it every day of his life until he was nineteen. The Three Horseshoes had been the centre of Duscombe for longer than anyone could remember.

"I'll get a room here," Steve said. "Thank you for the lift."

Ridham shrugged. "It weren't a bother. An extra body on the cart don't bother the horse none."

Steve clasped hands with Ridham quickly and jumped down, trying not to wince when the impact jarred all the aches from a day of travelling. He waved the old farmer away and took one last, deep breath of the cold evening air. Warmth and the yeasty smell of beer filled his lungs as soon as he stepped inside. Steve pushed his way through to the bar and waited patiently until the landlady finished serving a group of red-faced farmhands. She turned around, and Steve grinned as he recognised her.

"What can I get y--Steve Rogers, is that you?"

Steve nodded, feeling light and happy to see a familiar face. "It's me, Mrs Cooper. Hello."

"Well, I'll be." 

She gestured for him to follow her to the end of the bar, so she could pull him in for a tight hug. Steve's ribs felt like they were going to break by the time she released him, but some of the weariness had faded away as though she'd taken it from him.

"We followed all your adventures in the papers," Mrs Cooper said, holding him out at arm's length to look at him with sharp eyes. "I've got all your cuttings up behind the bar. What brings you down here?"

"I need a room for a few weeks," Steve said. "Do you still rent them out?"

"I do. Need a rest, honey?"

"Something like that." Steve smiled hopefully. "How much will it be?"

Mrs Cooper named a sum that made Steve gulp, and her eyes softened immediately. She must have seen the worry in his eyes because she said, "That includes breakfast and dinner, so you needn't worry about food. And if you'd like to help out around the place, I could take a bit off that amount. Mr Cooper died two winters ago and I haven't been able to keep a boy hired to help. They run off to join your Aerial Fleet or..." She paused tactfully, before continuing, "...or the Army, like your young friend, the moment they're old enough to take the King's shilling. They're after adventure, now, not hauling barrels and pulling weeds in the garden."

"I'll take it," Steve said, "and the work. Thank you."

"You look about done in," Mrs Cooper said with a kind smile. "You'll want your bed and a bite to eat now. There's plenty who'll stand you a drink or two...tomorrow."

Steve smiled gratefully. "Thank you, really. Thank you."

The room she showed him to was tiny, up under the eaves where the sound from the bar only carried dimly. There was one window, and Steve threw it open to let out some of the musty warmth. The ceiling sloped down, so that he couldn't stand upright on one side, and the bed had been shoved over there against the wall. It was wider than the bed at the boarding house, but would still have been a narrow fit for two, and it was so soft he felt like he'd sink through it when he sat on the edge to tug off his shoes.

While he was changing for bed, Mrs Cooper brought a plate of cheese, ham, and thick slices of bread, with a mug of thick beer to wash it down. She left it outside with a quiet tap on the door, and Steve wolfed down everything while sitting cross-legged on the bed. His stomach was full for the first time all day, and the beer went straight to his head.

Steve fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillows and, for the first time in months, he didn't dream of fire and falling and cold, cold water. He dreamed of nothing at all.


	3. Chapter 3

_10th April, 1905, Devon_

Early morning sunshine turned the mist lying on the fields into a bright, golden haze, as Steve ran along beside a hedgerow a week later. Birdsong filled the air, and a crisp breeze cooled skin that had become too warm through exertion. Rabbits scattered in front of him, startled by human feet in a fallow field they usually had all to themselves, and Steve put on an extra burst of speed that made his lungs burn.

He vaulted the fence dividing the field from a small lane, and slowed to a steady jog so he could catch his breath. Just the fact that he could catch his breath while jogging slowly felt like a huge milestone. The doctors at the military hospital had been making Steve walk and then slowly trot around the grounds to build up his strength before he left, but he'd barely been able to manage three circuits.

This morning, he'd run more than three miles, and even though he was tired, it wasn't the kind of bone-deep exhaustion he'd been battling during his recovery. This was the type of tiredness that would leave him pleasantly achy later, but could be defeated by Mrs Cooper's substantial breakfasts. And he still felt like there was energy in his body for whatever chores she asked him to do later. For the first time since the _America_ went down, Steve felt strong and happy in his body.

A week of running and carrying barrels in the spring sunshine had done more than the months of carefully prescribed circuits and exercises with weighted bags had achieved.

It had also re-familiarised him with all the tiny hidden paths and out of the way barns he'd known when he was a child. Steve had even travelled on the twice daily omnibus to the surrounding towns and villages to walk around and relearn the area. If he was going to find a man who, according to the reports, could disappear into the night without leaving a trace, then he needed that familiarity.

The narrow lane joined the main road--still narrow--and the first few houses of Duscombe appeared around a corner. Steve slowed to a stop as he passed a pair of cottages. He'd deliberately avoided entering the village from this direction before, but today it felt like the right time. The two cottages were at least a hundred years old and their stone walls had always felt cool to the touch, even in the hottest summers. Their doors were painted with matching red paint that looked fresh, but the windows were dark and empty. The tiny gardens in front were overgrown with weeds, even the vegetable patch Steve and Bucky had spent three afternoons digging when they were thirteen.

Bucky's grandparents had smiled when they'd cleared the first small section of earth, and asked why they didn't have a vegetable patch as well, so Steve and Bucky had expanded it to take up most of Steve's front garden. His mother had chuckled when she saw it, and both families had shared in the beans, carrots, and potatoes the garden had produced.

There had been a tiny connecting passage through the shared wall, between the attic rooms where Steve and Bucky had slept. Steve could barely remember any nights when one of them hadn't crawled through to sleep head to toe in the other's bed. Even when they were sixteen, and the crawl had become a painful, skin-scraping wriggle, Bucky had spent his final night at home before he left to join the Army curled against Steve's back on his narrow bed. Out of habit, Steve refused to let himself think about everything he and Bucky had done that last summer. Some things were best left buried at the back of his mind, where they hurt less.

Instead, he lost himself in other memories for a while, of all the happy times he'd spent in that cottage before Bucky went away. He pushed away the images of a coffin lying in the kitchen and black ribbons on his door. Of the sympathetic man who had to tell Steve he couldn't stay in the cottage now that his mother was gone, not if he couldn't work on the land or take over as midwife.

Those memories, he filed away in the same box where he put the image of Bucky's death notice and the painful days after.

The cottages had been where he'd been happy, really happy, and that was what he wanted to take away from seeing them again.

The rattle of an approaching cart pulled him back to the world, and Steve realised he'd been standing there long enough for the sweaty shirt plastered against his chest to get unpleasantly chilled. He walked quickly to the Three Horseshoes, and he was almost warm by the time he pushed through the back door into the kitchen.

Mrs Cooper put a bowl of porridge down in front of him when he sat, and she handed him the honey jar with a fond smile. "You were up early again, my dear. The sun wasn't even up."

Steve drizzled honey over his porridge and held out his mug for some of the strong tea she offered. "I couldn't sleep."

"You've barely slept since your first night," Mrs Cooper said. "Always off running and walking. You're walking the food I feed you right off before it has a chance to settle."

"I need to get stronger," Steve said, and pushed a large spoonful of porridge into his mouth defiantly.

"You're still set on joining the police, then?" Mrs Cooper asked. "Why don't you settle back here? There's always work for someone with strong arms. Your mama's old cottage is available to rent again, it could be just like old times."

"It wouldn't be."

"No, I suppose it wouldn't," Mrs Cooper said with a small sigh. "Well, if it's stronger you want to be, then the brewery cart will be here soon. And old man Hargrove asked if he could borrow you for the mill when that's done, if you're still eager for the work."

"I like being useful," Steve said sincerely.

***

The other purpose behind all the walking, running, travelling, and odd jobbing, was gossip. Steve had learned during his service that only a small percentage of information ever went into reports, even ones that were supposed to be asking for help. He'd combed through the thin file about the Winter Soldier, marking each sighting on a map he'd bought at Exeter station, and concluded that there were a lot of missing data points.

What he had in the file was the tip of the iceberg. What he needed was the rest of it; all the sightings that couldn't be confirmed, or where the Winter Soldier hadn't done anything worth summoning the police for.

And for that, he needed all the gossip that an area like this generated. He played on the fact that he'd been away to catch up on all the news in the pub in the evening. He listened as he travelled around, and he struck up conversations in bakeries and pie shops when he bought midday meals. He volunteered for every heavy, dirty job that Mrs Cooper sent his way, and he paid attention to every tiny nugget of information that was dropped around him.

Already, he had three times the number of data points that he'd got from the files, and a pattern was emerging. The Winter Soldier had a system, and Steve thought he was starting to understand it. This was what Fury had wanted him to learn, and why Fury had sent him in, rather than someone from away.

If he put it together, all the vague sightings, the robberies where nothing was taken, even the rumours of a man wearing a mask over his face, seen from a distance...there was enough of a pattern for Steve to start making some guesses about where he'd be next. The Winter Soldier operated within a twenty mile radius of the Duscombe area, and he seemed to target particular types of places at certain times. He even hit some places more than once, although the visits were spread out over weeks or months. The part Steve hadn't worked out yet was what it all meant.

Why did he sneak into the luggage cars of certain trains and not others, and why did he rarely take anything? Why did he raid clockmakers and jewellers at least once a month?

Why was he staying so close to this area, when he'd be less noticeable if he kept moving around the country?

Steve's curiosity had been thoroughly engaged, and he couldn't resist the temptation to try to track the man down. He made a list of possible targets for the Winter Soldier and started sneaking out of the pub during the confusion of closing time, after Mrs Cooper thought he'd gone to bed.

Getting back into the pub wasn't difficult. Mrs Cooper never locked the door, and she slept so deeply that Steve could drop a dozen books and his washbasin on his bedroom floor without waking her. Steve had accidentally learned that during his second night in the pub. He'd apologised the next morning for the chips in the thick china bowl, and Mrs Cooper hadn't asked him why he'd knocked it over.

Steve made sure that the wash stand and his stack of books were on the other side of the room before he went to sleep after that. Flailing awake from nightmares was only made worse by unexpected loud crashes.

For five nights after he'd established the pattern, Steve shivered and froze through hours of watching train stations, shops, and big old houses. He bought an old bicycle to increase his range and hid it in a disused barn, and he waited. Mrs Cooper noticed the dark circles growing under his eyes from lack of sleep, but her only comment was an occasional suggestion that he should nap in the sun, rather than pulling weeds in her garden.

For five nights, Steve didn't see the Winter Soldier. He heard rumours in the pub about the places the Winter Soldier had been--like the luggage car he'd rifled while Steve waited at a railway station on the wrong line--but that was the closest Steve got.

Five nights of cold, lack of sleep, and the constant lurking fear that someone would find out what he was doing.

It was miserable and depressing, and Steve couldn't give it up.

***

Steve's luck changed on the sixth night. He almost didn't go out. Exhaustion had been dragging on his body all day, despite a short nap in the armchair in Mrs Cooper's sitting room in the afternoon, and it had been tempting not to slip out with the closing time crowd.

Except a streak of bloody-minded stubbornness got him up and creeping downstairs, just before Mrs Cooper rang the bell to call time, and he slipped out of the back door while she was chivvying a tipsy Joshua Ives out of the front door.

Relearning the trick of riding a bicycle had taken an entire afternoon after he bought it. Now Steve's legs pumped without any conscious thought, and he silently sped down the lanes and roads as fast as he could. He had a list of several potential targets tonight--all museums--but some instinct took him to the tiny one in Teignmouth, with its collection of Roman coins and pottery fragments. It felt right, somehow, so he hid behind a tree in the churchyard opposite.

Three hours later, Steve was about to give up and admit that he'd been wrong again, when movement in the shadows near the museum caught his eye. The moon had been flitting in and out behind the clouds all night, and he'd already had a couple of false alarms that turned out to be cats. Steve flattened himself to the trunk of the tree and peered intently at the building.

A dark shape separated from the shadows. It might have been man-shaped, but it was difficult to tell because the moon disappeared behind a cloud and Steve was left in total darkness. By the time the cloud moved away, the pale moonlight revealed the front of the museum and nothing else.

Steve waited anyway. This was the closest he'd come to a sighting, and he couldn't leave now.

He didn't know how long he'd been waiting, when the faint scrape of a window opening came to him on the breeze. Muscles so tense he almost ached with it, Steve stared at the building until he saw a black shadow slipping out of an upper window. It moved gracefully, legs and body slithering over the sill to hang from its hands for a long moment, before it dropped to the ground. The soft thump when it landed was so quiet Steve might have missed it if he hadn't been listening so intently. He couldn't help admiring the control and athleticism that required, even as he stepped around the tree and hopped over the low wall surrounding the churchyard.

Closer up, the shadow resolved into the more defined shape of a man. He wore a black jacket, trousers, and gloves that Steve thought might be made from leather, and his long hair fell messily over his face. The mask over his face was familiar from the sketch, and he'd smeared something around his eyes, turning them into dark hollows with a pale glitter at the centre.

Steve swallowed and crossed the street. His feet sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness.

The Winter Soldier stopped a few feet away and waited, head tilted as though he was curious.

"Who are you?" Steve asked.

There was no reply. Steve could feel sweat slowly trickling down his back despite the cool night air. He hadn't thought far ahead enough to have a plan for this moment. Backing away was out of the question, but the Winter Soldier wasn't trying to attack him and Steve never started fights without provocation.

Time seemed to stretch out endlessly as they watched each other. The Winter Soldier was so still, Steve couldn't see him breathing. The breeze caught his hair and blew it across his face, but he didn't even lift a hand to brush it away.

"What do you want?" Steve asked, barely letting his voice rise above a whisper.

It was as though the words fell into the stillness and shattered there, breaking the detente into a thousand pieces that couldn't be reformed. Steve took a step forward, and then stumbled back as the Winter Soldier ran at him.

It was over in an instant. A flurry of dark leather and strong, brutal hands pushed Steve, sending him flying into the museum wall with a pained grunt. The arm that had connected with Steve's chest was hard, too hard to be flesh and blood, and Steve's eyes watered at the pain in his back and ribs. He barely stayed on his feet, and by the time his eyes cleared, the Winter Soldier had gone.


	4. Chapter 4

_16th April, 1905, Devon_

Steve woke up the next morning feeling like someone had taken a cricket bat to his ribs. As he'd been swept aside by what he was now sure was a metal arm, the analogy seemed right. He groaned as he sat up in bed, and spent a few minutes just concentrating on breathing without wincing. Everything in his upper body was aching and stiff from lying down, even though the bed was usually soft and comfortable.

He was told that there had been bruising and broken ribs among his injuries from the _America_ 's crash, but he'd been unconscious for so long they'd mostly healed by the time he was awake. All Steve could remember from that time was how weak he'd felt, as if every breath was a chore and lifting his hand was the hardest work imaginable. They'd tried to keep his limbs from stiffening up while he slept, but even twice daily flexibility exercises by the nurses hadn't been able to replicate a normal body moving around.

Compared to how he'd felt back then, a bit of pain and stiffness wasn't too bad. After a few minutes of careful moving and stretching, Steve was even able to stand up and take a deep breath without grimacing.

He couldn't avoid seeing the dark purple marks over his chest when he stripped down to wash in front of the basin in the corner. They stood out lividly against the pale skin, and he suspected that his back, where he'd hit the museum wall, would look just as bad. He'd have to remember to keep his shirt on outside the room, no matter how hot and sweaty he got when he was working.

Pulling on a shirt required gritted teeth, and Steve flinched when the fabric pressed against his tender skin. The shirt felt tighter than it had a week ago, but that was probably because everything hurt no matter how he tugged at it.

The sun was well above the horizon when he slowly went downstairs, and the smell of cooking bacon lured him into the kitchen, even though he'd half-heartedly planned to go running. Mrs Cooper smiled when she saw him and waved a wooden spatula.

"I was starting to wonder whether I should call you down," she said cheerfully. "It's the Lord's day, but that doesn't mean we sleep the day away here."

Steve chuckled. "Is that why we have bacon instead of porridge today?"

Mrs Cooper nodded and waved him to the large, freshly scrubbed table. Two places had been set, and there were small glasses of milk set by the plates.

"Bacon and eggs," she said. "And if you're good, there's a beef and ale pie later as a special treat. I remember your mother telling me how much you liked my pies when she took them home."

"Is that where they came from?" Steve asked.

"Your mother was a saint, but she wasn't a cook," Mrs Cooper said. "But she'd let me give her a pie sometimes, in payment for her tending me when I was confined and then tending Mr Cooper's ulcers when they got bad. She said beef and ale was your favourite."

"It was," Steve said. "I never knew where she got them from before."

"Half the village used to pay your mother in kind," Mrs Cooper said, as she carried her frying pan to the table and flipped bacon and eggs onto the plates. "Nobody here had much money, but your mother didn't mind taking carrots or chickens or a pie instead of coin."

"She couldn't stand seeing people suffer if she could help them, even if they couldn't pay," Steve said quietly.

"I'd wager you've turned out just like her," Mrs Cooper said. "Now, eat up before it gets cold. You'll need to change into something more respectable before we leave. I know you've got a better shirt than that, and you'll need your hat."

Steve slowly lowered the forkful of bacon he'd been about to eat. "My hat?"

"For church, of course," Mrs Cooper said. "It's the Lord's day, after all. Everyone here still goes to church. And you'll need to bring up another barrel before you change, to save you from doing it in your good shirt later."

"You know there are machines that can do that kind of work now," Steve said with a fond smile. "It's Sunday, after all. I always thought it was a day of rest."

"It's only a day of rest for those who don't provide the drink to the resters," Mrs Cooper said with asperity. "And where would I get the money to buy machines to do my lifting? Or the gas to power them? We're not likely to see gas laid out here in my lifetime."

Steve grinned at her and ate his bacon.

Hefting a barrel and then sitting in a wooden church pew for a couple of hours sounded like torture, but he couldn't complain without explaining where the bruises came from. So he gritted his teeth and bore it silently.

That night, he stayed home and went to bed early without any attempt at subterfuge. He wrote a report to post to Fury tomorrow, and fell asleep as soon as he lay down, despite the deep ache across his chest.

There had never been any Winter Soldier sightings on a Sunday.

***

Eight nights later, Steve found the Winter Soldier again.

This time, they met on a train. Steve had been putting together gossip about sightings with reported disturbances in the luggage vans of certain trains, and he'd arrived at a pattern. It wasn't something he could guarantee--not enough to request Fury set up some kind of police operation--but Steve felt confident that one day, if he waited long enough in the right place, the Winter Soldier would strike on his watch again.

The only small problem was that sneaking out to spy on local railway stations couldn't be done if he waited until the pub's closing time. He'd be lucky to see the last train if he went out that late. So he invented a girl he was walking out with in Ainford, five miles away, and pretended to take her to the music hall and a couple of small dances. Mrs Cooper gave him amused looks and wondered loudly about what time he got home, but she seemed content to believe him.

Steve suspected she was quietly hoping for a fast wedding so he'd stay, and not return to London.

Every two or three days, he hid in a ditch by the tracks near Starcross Station and watched each train arrive and depart. The Winter Soldier had been seen in the area on several of the occasions when station inspectors reported disturbed baggage, and Steve hoped he'd try here again.

He was certain the Winter Soldier wouldn't return to that particular museum again, and Steve was uncomfortably aware that it had been pure luck that night. There were a dozen tiny museums scattered around the area that the Soldier could have broken into, although Steve had noticed that the number he hadn't broken into yet was growing small.

Steve wondered, sometimes, what the Winter Soldier was looking for.

On that night, Steve settled into his usual place near the tracks and watched. The sun set, and he continued watching, even as the cold settled into his bones.

The eight fifteen from Exeter pulled in with a great puff of smoke and steam. The platform was short and the luggage van was the last carriage, putting it just outside the bright circle of the station's lights.

A dark shape caught Steve's eye, rising up from a shadowy area beside the platform and stealing silently across the ground. It crawled up the side of the luggage van faster than Steve would have thought possible and disappeared onto the roof. Just as it swung up, Steve saw a flash of light on metal, and he knew.

The engine whistled, and Steve heard the first quiet chuff of steam signalling that it was starting to move. The sensible plan would have been to alert someone in the station and have the train stopped.

Steve crouched low and ran across the open area between his hiding place and the tracks. He expected someone to call out, but nobody did. The train was moving slowly forward, so slowly that Steve was easily able to grasp the rail at the back and jump up. He clung for a moment, scrabbling to find a foothold, and then his toe caught on something and he wasn't scrabbling anymore.

He was clinging to the back of a train that was picking up speed, which was clearly a bad idea, but he was clinging securely.

Steve took a deep breath and began climbing up. The door at the back of the train was firmly locked, unsurprisingly, so he would have to follow the Winter Soldier's route. When he scrambled on top of the van and the wind caught his hair for the first time, he should have felt terrified. It was what any rational person would do.

It reminded him of nights clambering around on the outer hull of his ship; the wind in his face and a thousand feet of empty air below him. There had been a subtle thrill to it, to knowing that it was only the carabiner and his own skill that kept him from falling. Half the time, he hadn't even attached the carabiner to the safety ropes. None of the experienced airmen did, because it slowed them down and they wouldn't--couldn't--be slow when they were crawling over the hull during a battle.

Steve only just restrained himself from whooping as he pulled himself up on the roof and balanced there. He'd missed this feeling during his land bound months of healing.

Halfway down the van, a skylight stood open. Steve found his balance easily against the swaying surface and ran along the roof. He peered over the edge of the opening, down into the dimly lit carriage.

A shadow was moving around. Steve didn't give himself time to think. He jumped through the skylight feet first and landed lightly in a crouch.

The shadow turned and Steve recognised the long hair and black mask. The black paint around the Winter Soldier's eyes was streaked with sweat, and his blue eyes looked startled for a moment before they went icy and cold.

Steve straightened up, fists already raised defensively. "Who are you?"

The Winter Soldier didn't reply. He twisted and kicked out, sweeping Steve's legs from under him. Steve bounced up, but the Soldier punched him and kicked again and Steve hit the side of the carriage with a bone-jarring crunch.

He'd never met anyone who fought like the Winter Soldier. Punch followed kick followed punch, and Steve tried to duck out of the way of the worst of the hits, but the Winter Soldier kept coming. The tight space didn't seem to throw the Soldier. It didn't worry Steve, either; he had trained to fight in confined spaces, because that was the only way to fight on an airship. 

As he ducked and rolled under another swinging punch from the Soldier's metal arm, Steve wondered whether that was where the Soldier had been trained as well. He wasn't just moving within the narrow space, he was using the walls and low ceiling as platforms for his attacks.

Steve had been trained to do that as well. He jumped up and grabbed a bar that ran across the roof, using it to swing forward and kick the Soldier in the chest with both feet. The Soldier stumbled back and Steve dropped to the floor again, charging at him before he could recover his balance. Steve pushed the Soldier into the wall and heard a pained grunt, the first sign of weakness he'd heard all night.

He grabbed the Soldier's metal wrist just before he brought his hand down on the back of Steve's head. The metal was cold against his skin, and he could hear gears and pistons whining as he tried to force it back. Suddenly, the arm's pressure went away and Steve slammed it up against the van wall with a crunch.

But a moment later, Steve realised that was a diversion. The Soldier's flesh and blood hand thumped against the side of his neck, the Soldier's knee hit his thigh, and Steve barely managed to keep his balance as the Soldier pushed him away.

Steve jumped over another sweeping kick and almost hit his head on the ceiling. The Soldier shoved off from the wall, twisting and kicking and forcing Steve backward. Steve's legs hit something--a trunk, maybe--and his knees gave way, sending him falling backwards onto his shoulders. His back cracked painfully and his head rang from hitting it as he fell, and by the time he blinked the stars in his eyes away...the Winter Soldier had gone.

Steve lay there for a while, swearing and trying to breathe, before he slowly untangled himself from the trunk and got to his feet.

He snuck off the train at the next station and took the last train running in the other direction, arriving at Starcross well after midnight. It was a long bicycle ride back to Duscombe, with every muscle feeling bruised and battered.

Steve had to make up a story about fighting for his girl's honour in a pub when he got home from his run the next morning. Mrs Cooper looked sceptical, but she cleaned the cut next to his shiny black eye without saying a word.

***

Steve had accumulated a huge quantity of Winter Soldier research, enough to look like an obsession if anyone found it. After his run, he sent Fury a report about his sighting of the Soldier on the train, carefully leaving out the fact that he'd followed and ended up fighting him again. Fury definitely didn't need to know how close Steve had managed to get. He suspected Fury wouldn't be happy that the Soldier had got away.

The map of Devon pinned to the inside of his wardrobe was now covered with coloured dots, each one marking a Soldier sighting, with the colour indicating the type and confidence of the sighting.

The pub would open in half an hour, so Mrs Cooper would be calling him down for some tea any minute now. Steve tapped a spot on the map and checked it against one of the lists that filled his notepad.

If his theory was right, there were two places he might find the Winter Soldier tonight. Only two, but there was only one of him. That presented a problem.

Steve frowned at the list and up at the map again. He had to make a decision.

***

The sun had set and a few gas lamps provided the only irregular illumination when Steve rode into Newton Abbot that evening. He passed a few brightly lit windows from pubs and a hotel, but the street was quiet and the thrum of his tires sounded unnaturally loud.

Steve braked and hopped off the bicycle in front of the railway station. Leaving it tied to the railings there was less suspicious than anywhere else he could think of, and there was a fair chance it might still be there when he came back. He hurried back to the main shopping area, on the Torquay road, stepping quickly into a narrow passageway between two shops when a pub door opened to spill light and laughter out. Two men exited and wove their way drunkenly away into the night.

Steve took a quiet, thankful breath and continued on.

The clockmaker's shop was some distance from the pubs and hotel. No windows were lit here, and Steve hesitated, unsure where he should wait. Even though he'd been jogging for a few minutes, his breath wasn't burning in his lungs and he felt alive and awake. Even the aches over his ribs and face from the fight with the Soldier felt less insistent. 

Tonight, Steve was certain he would meet the Soldier again, and the thought filled him with a strange mixture of anticipation and nervousness that dulled all the pain.

After a brief hesitation, Steve settled for ducking into another passage between shops. From the smell, he guessed that the grocer's next door used it to store rotten produce. He carefully breathed through his mouth and settled in for the wait.

The Winter Soldier would be here tonight, he was sure of it.

After all, the Winter Soldier needed to repair his metal arm. Steve had heard the whine and stutter of gears jamming in the joints during their fight last night. The Soldier had switched to kicking out and shoving at him after that, instead of trying to pummel him with the metal fist. There was a small chance that Steve was wrong, just like there was a chance this was the wrong clockmaker's, but Steve had a good feeling about this.

It was the only clockmaker's within ten miles of the railway line. There was a jeweller's in Torquay, but the Soldier had raided one months ago--stealing nothing, but smashing all the cases--and hadn't touched one since. Steve suspected a jeweller's tools and parts were just different enough from a clockmaker's to make a different. The Soldier had been sighted in a clockmaker's two nights after his failed raid on the jeweller's and he'd taken a few tools. He'd been seen in clockmaker's shops twice since.

Steve would wager money that the Soldier had only taken what he needed most urgently each time, and that was why he kept raiding more shops. He'd need more spare parts and possibly different tools.

So he waited patiently in a stinking alley, watching the clockmaker's shop for any sign of movement inside.

A clock was just tolling midnight, when something moving in the darkness caught Steve's eye. It was barely a flicker of movement that he might have missed if he wasn't watching so intently, but it was something.

Anticipation roared up and warmed his veins again, making his heart hammer in his chest. Steve ignored it and squinted across the street, searching vainly for another sign.

There, at the back of the shop, he thought he saw shadow move against the wall. That was all he needed.

Steve had to take a longer route around than he liked, but he was strong enough now to run fast and stealthy and pull himself over fences. He crossed the road, far enough from the shop to be out of view, and ran down a side street. From there, he scrambled over walls and across enclosed paved areas behind the shops until he reached the one behind the clockmaker's shop. He perched on the wall surrounding it for a moment, before dropping lightly to the ground and scurrying across to crouch in a dark corner, watching the back door intently.

It was slightly ajar. Steve was sure no clockmaker would leave any door open, not when he had valuable tools, clocks, and mechanical gadgets inside.

Two o'clock had just chimed, when the door finally opened and the Winter Soldier walked into the tiny yard. He was flexing his arm back and forth, curling his metal fingers in and out, and the moonlight shining off the silvery surface was all Steve could see for a moment.

That brief moment of distraction almost cost Steve his head. The Winter Soldier seemed to see him and dance into the fight in the same moment. Steve had to roll across the cobbles to avoid the Soldier's initial swipe at him. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled back as the Soldier charged at him.

His back hit the wall, and all the air was knocked out of his lungs. For a moment, Steve couldn't breathe. His vision started to turn grey at the edges, and he scrabbled at the Soldier's shoulders and arms, trying to push him away. It didn't work, and the Soldier's living arm was across his throat now, choking off all his attempts to pull in air, while the metal arm tried to catch at his wrists.

Steve resorted to scratching and tearing at the Soldier's face, trying to gouge at his eyes to force him back. He missed the eyes, but his fingers caught on the Soldier's mask and ripped it away. The Soldier's arm across his throat loosened for a moment and Steve took his chance to drop to the ground and crawl away. He was still holding the Soldier's black mask when he flipped to his feet again. He looked towards the Soldier, and froze.

A shaft of moonlight had thrown the Soldier's face into stark relief just as he turned toward Steve again. Steve knew that face. He knew it as well as he knew his own, even though he hadn't seen it for years.

"Bucky?" he said incredulously.

The Winter Soldier stopped, his fist half-raised for another punch. A look of devastated confusion flashed across his face for a moment. "Who the hell is Bucky?"

Steve gaped at him. He couldn't seem to stop looking or force his limbs to move. Time had frozen, and all he could see was that face, that familiar face, staring out at him from under the Winter Soldier's tangled hair. Even the remnants of thick black face paint smeared around them couldn't hide the eyes Steve knew so well.

"You're Bucky," Steve said, his tongue feeling thick and clumsy around the words. "James Buchanan Barnes."

The confusion disappeared, replaced with cold anger that Steve had never seen in Bucky's eyes. The Winter Soldier took two bounding steps forward, and Steve was still too frozen to defend himself. A metal arm smashed into the side of his head. Steve fell to the ground as the world went dark around him, and that was all he knew.

***

He wasn't out for long. The clock was only chiming the quarter hour when Steve sat up, cradling his aching head. He didn't have to look around to know the Winter Soldier--Bucky--had disappeared into the night again.


	5. Chapter 5

_27th April, 1905, Devon_

Despite all the aches and bruises he'd gathered, Steve pushed himself out the following morning for the longest run he'd attempted since his accident. He ran almost to the edge of the moor, and his legs and lungs were burning by the time he returned to Duscombe.

He couldn't go back to the pub yet, though. His mind was still too unsettled, and he knew Mrs Cooper would see it in his face and ask questions. Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was Bucky staring at him with wide, cold eyes that didn't show a flicker of recognition. It hurt each time, because Bucky had never looked at him that way. He'd laughed, teased, looked sad or angry, and sometimes there had even been so much fondness in his eyes that Steve's heart ached when he remembered it. Steve had never seen that cold blankness in Bucky's face before. It looked foreign and wrong, like a sick kind of joke invented just to tear him up inside. Because even though the face was older, it was unmistakably Bucky's, and so was the voice.

Steve thought he would recognise that voice even if he hadn't heard it for eighty years, instead of just the eight it had really been.

Instead of running all the way back to the pub, he hopped over the wall around the garden he'd once turned into a vegetable patch with Bucky. He flopped down on his back in the weeds and stared up at the blue sky until his eyes burned and watered. At least, he told himself that it was the brightness that was making his eyes leak and hurt. He couldn't be crying for Bucky, because he'd used up all his tears four years ago, when he received Bucky's death notice.

Steve didn't know how long he lay there, staring up at the sky without seeing it. The sweat on his shirt and skin had been dry for a while when he finally scrubbed his eyes roughly and sat up. Birds chirped cheerfully in the trees, and a breeze filled with the scent of green growing things and early spring flowers ruffled his hair. Against his will, Steve felt some of the tight ache in his chest ease away, as memories of the good times in this garden pushed out the memory what he'd seen last night.

Or maybe it wasn't pushed out, not completely, but the good memories gave Steve the strength to put the other one somewhere less immediate.

He stood and looked up at the tiny cottage he'd grown up in. It was still empty, but Steve could remember when there were vases of flowers in the windows and the shutters had been painted bright green. His mother had always made sure the cottage looked warm and welcoming, even after she got sick the last time.

There was still a key hidden under a stone by the door. It was rusty, but it turned in the lock and the door swung open. Steve hesitated for a moment, half expecting someone to shout out, but all he could hear was bird song.

The cottage smelled damp and musty, and there was a thick layer of dust on the floors and shelves. A chair with a missing leg sat next to the cold hearth, but otherwise the single room that had been kitchen, living room, and his mother's bedroom, was empty.

The stairs up to the attic creaked under Steve's weight in all the places he remembered. It was dark up there; the tiny window at one end had never let in much light. The ceilings had been low, even when he was a scrawny, under-sized boy. He'd grown several inches after he joined the Aerial Fleet. There had been several months when he'd been afraid that they'd declare he was too big for the airships. Now, his head knocked against even the tallest part of the ceiling at the roof peak, and he had to stoop to get through the door. The low ceilings had been why he got the attic bedroom and his mother slept behind a screen downstairs.

It was why Bucky had slept in the attic room next door and his grandparents slept downstairs.

Steve couldn't see much, and he'd left his matchbook at the pub. But he could imagine it and remember how it had looked when he lived here. The narrow bed pushed up against the far end, so that he and Bucky could whisper through the connecting passage if they were actually obeying the rules and sleeping in their own beds for once. The shelf of books beside the window, most of them so old and tattered they had to be held shut with twine to keep the pages in. Pictures covering the walls, drawn on whatever scraps of paper he'd been able to find, and then on the clean, smooth sheets of the sketchbook his mother had saved for.

This was the place he'd held onto through the months of recovery after his ship went down. This room and the memory of Bucky sprawled on the bed, talking a mile a minute, or reading the same stories aloud over and over when Steve was sick.

Steve peered into the darkness for a long time, trying to see it, before giving up with a quiet sigh. He replaced the key where it had always been and slowly walked back to the pub.

***

Breakfast had been cleared away long ago by the time Steve washed and changed out of his sweat-stained shirt. Mrs Cooper was washing the floor in the pub, but she gave him an indulgent look and insisted on making him a sandwich, despite his protests that he was fine.

On reflection, after Steve devoured half the sandwich in three bites, he was willing to concede that he'd needed the food. He must have looked rough as hell, because Mrs Cooper stood over him in the kitchen while he ate and added a thick slice of cheese and a huge spoonful of pickles to his plate as well.

"Old Man Ridham was by looking for you earlier," she said, adding an apple to his plate as well. "He needs someone to help repair a wall up on his top field. You can probably still get there in time if you ride that bicycle you've been trying to pretend you don't have."

Steve froze with a huge bite of bread and ham in his mouth. He looked up guiltily and struggled to chew and swallow, but Mrs Cooper just chuckled.

"It's the grease marks on your trouser legs, dear," she said. "They're distinctive. Mr Cooper used to have the same marks and he refused to wear a clip as well. You might as well bring it into the back garden rather than storing it...where have you been keeping it?" She didn't wait for an answer before continuing. "Never mind that. You bring it through to the garden, and I'll lend you a tarp to cover it."

The bread and ham finally went down in a thick lump that made Steve's throat hurt, but at least he could rasp, "Thank you."

Mrs Cooper cocked her head and surveyed him critically. "On second thought, maybe you should stay home today."

"Do I really look that bad?"

"You look like someone took a grater to your face and then used it as a punching bag for good measure."

Steve felt himself flushing, which made the ache over his cheek feel even worse. "It looks worse than it is."

"Hmm." Mrs Cooper pursed her lips. "Steve, my dear, you're not...I know you're short of coin, but you're not fighting. For money, I mean. Are you? It's just, you've been sneaking out most nights--yes, I know you've been out--and you come home looking like...that." She waved a hand expressively. "I can't help worrying. You're not the scrawny little thing you were before you left for the Fleet, but prize fighting isn't--"

"I'm not fighting for money," Steve said, even though he'd always been taught it was rude to interrupt a lady when she was speaking. "I promise, that's the last thing I'm doing."

She didn't look convinced. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure," Steve said. He tried to look as innocent and honest as he could, despite his shiny black eye. "This is something else."

"Something to do with those letters you've been getting from London? Another one arrived for you earlier."

Steve stared down at the envelope she dropped beside his plate. It was addressed in what he'd come to recognise as Fury's messy scrawl, and the postmark was London. He nodded carefully.

Mrs Cooper sighed. "Whatever you're up to, I probably don't want to know. Just try not to get yourself killed, because your mother's spirit would never forgive me. She'd come back to haunt my pub, and then where would I be?"

Steve wasn't sure how much Mrs Cooper really believed in ghosts, but he smiled at her. "I'll do my best."

"Why don't you stay home tonight?" she said gently. "Just to give yourself a chance to heal a bit. I'll show you how to pour a pint and you can help me out behind the bar."

A part of Steve wanted to get straight out there, to hunt down the man with Bucky's face and demand answers. The more sensible, rational part of him knew that would be a bad idea. He was battered and bruised, he was exhausted, and some instinct told him that the Winter Soldier wouldn't be hunting in his usual haunts.

He should stay home until he knew more.

Steve smiled at Mrs Cooper. "I'll stay home, if you show me how to pour a pint and let me finish washing the floor for you."

"It's a deal," Mrs Cooper said. "I'll send a boy up to Old Man Ridham to let him know you can't build his wall for him today. He's probably already found a strong back to help, but it always pays to be polite."

She bustled away, muttering something about tarpaulins under her breath as she went. Steve slowly finished his sandwich and spread the pickles on his slice of cheese, savouring the tang and crunch as he ate. Fury's letter was brief, but it included a couple of bank notes, and Steve was grateful for the supplement to his nearly empty purse. He took the letter upstairs and scratched out a short reply, before he trotted downstairs to scrub the pub's flagstone floor.

There was a second letter in the little bundle he posted later. He took more care over that one and wrote in his best hand, even printing the directions on the envelope to make sure there would be no delay or confusion.

That night, Steve poured pints of beer and cider, and listened to gossip, and tried not to wonder where the Winter Soldier was.

***

Steve spent the next day hauling stone on the Ridham farm. The hard work out in the bright spring sunshine left him pleasantly exhausted and his nose lightly sunburnt by the time he got back to the pub. Oddly, he ached less by the evening than he had the day before, even though the bruises over his ribs were still deep purple and all the lifting should have made his muscles hurt.

Mrs Cooper fed him thick ham sandwiches and put him to work behind the bar again, which Steve didn't mind at all. It reduced the temptation to go out and hunt down the Winter Soldier while he waited for a reply to his letter.

Or at least, it should have done. It had worked the night before, when he'd been too busy serving beer and washing glasses to think about anything except the next order. The first couple of hours were fine, and he chatted easily with some of the farmhands who were using the excuse of a birthday to get tipsy and noisy. Then, somewhere on the other side of the pub, he heard the words "Winter Soldier" and his blood ran cold.

Three old men were sitting in the corner playing dominos. They were there every night, playing and gossiping. Their faces were weather-lined and their hands were gnarled and swollen from arthritis, but their minds were still sharp despite their age. Steve watched them out of the corner of his eye as he poured another round for the farmhands.

Mrs Cooper must have noticed his interest, because she nudged his ribs as she went past and said, "You should probably take the old Georges another round and gather up their glasses."

"Who?" Steve asked.

She laughed. "The old Georges. I forget sometimes how young you were when you left us. George Calloway, George Evans, George Jones. We just call them the old Georges. They've been sitting at that table every night for more than thirty years. Take their beers over to them; save George getting up again."

Steve wove his way through the crowded room a minute later carrying three pints of beer. 

One of the Georges looked up and smiled gummily at him. "Thank you, my boy. On our tab, is it?"

"Yes, sir," Steve said politely. 

George looked slightly disappointed, and Steve wondered if he should have paid for the beer himself. He put the glasses down with a care for the arrangement of domino pieces and gathered up the empties. All three men took a long sip from their glasses and sighed happily, almost as one.

"Thank'ee, my boy," another George said, smiling to show his full set of teeth. "Finest beer in the area, this is."

Before Steve could respond, the third George said, "I still say they should hang him when they catch him."

"For a bit of smashing and bashing?" Toothless George said.

"It's a bit more than smashing this time," George Three said. "They say he practically took the museum apart at the seams."

Steve's chest suddenly felt too tight, but he forced himself to take a breath so he could say, "Who? Which museum?"

George Three put down a domino and knocked on the table. "That Winter Soldier. He damn near destroyed the museum in Ottery St. Mary last night. Nothing left of it but the walls, they say."

"They're exaggerating," Toothless George said.

"I had it from David Horne who had it from Able in the post office," George Three said. "Can't get more reliable than that. He went on a rampage, and the only wonder is nobody was hurt."

"Nobody was hurt because nobody goes to museums at midnight," Middle George said.

Steve nodded at them and walked away as they began bickering over the domino tile that Toothless George put down. He washed the glasses in a daze, and it was a miracle he didn't drop anything, because he all he could see was Bucky's eyes surrounded by black paint.

Bucky, furiously destroying cases and cabinets with that metal arm.

Bucky, alone and confused somewhere.

Steve was barely aware of the orders he took and the beer he poured for the rest of the night. Mrs Cooper quietly told him to go to bed an hour before she called time, and Steve didn't argue. He went to bed and lay awake for most of the night, trying to think of a plan.

***

The Winter Soldier wasn't operating on his usual schedule, which would make him much harder to trace. Steve spent most of the following day going back over everything he knew, and coming to no useful conclusions at all. The museum was an aberration; a change from his routine in every way. He'd never committed mindless destruction and he'd always been seen around museums on Saturday nights, when the odds were good that nobody would notice anything amiss until at least the following afternoon.

He'd been in Ottery St. Mary on a Thursday night.

It was possible that the Winter Soldier had realised that someone had worked out his pattern, and he was trying to make it harder for Steve to find him again. The wanton destruction told a different story: something had upset him, throwing him off his schedule.

And the only thing that had changed was Steve saying his name.

The problem was, that didn't tell Steve where he might be next. If he'd abandoned his schedule, Steve couldn't predict him anymore. And even though it was probably a terrible idea, Steve needed to see him. Needed to see his face--Bucky's face--because then Steve would be able to breathe again while he waited for a reply to his letter.

For lack of any other ideas, Steve bicycled out to Starcross that evening and waited in the ditch near the railway line, watching for a dark shadow slipping onto the luggage van of every train that went through the station. No shadow appeared, and Steve returned to the pub long after midnight, cold and damp to the bone.

While Mrs Cooper was at church the next day, Steve spread his map out on the bedroom floor and stared at all the dots marking Winter Soldier activity. He looked at it from every angle.

He laid a piece of tracing paper, bought a few days ago with more money than he could spare, over the map and began painstakingly marking colour-coded dots on it. This time, instead of marking by type of sighting, he used different colours for each month. Five months, all told.

And then he sat back and stared at it until he heard the door slam downstairs.

There was a new pattern. Not something that could predict where the Winter Soldier would be next, no. Something better: a pattern that might show where the Winter Soldier was hiding, particularly now that Steve had seen his face.

There was an old, tumble-down cottage out on the edge of the moor that he and Bucky had sometimes played in when they were children. They'd been told over and over that it was dangerous; that they'd fall through the rotten floorboards or the roof would fall in, and then they'd die. But Bucky had always laughed, and Steve decided he'd rather die having fun than coughing in his bed, so they'd ignored everyone and borrowed Bucky's granddad's pony and trap to ride out there whenever the weather was fine.

Thinking back, Steve was amazed they'd got away with it so often. The cottage was more than five miles away--probably closer to eight--and nobody had ever chased after them.

The coloured dots settled in waves on the tracing paper, radiating out from the edge of the moor, with the newest dots on the furthest edges. If the Winter Soldier really was Bucky, Steve would put the meagre contents of his purse on him being somewhere out near the moors. Possibly even in their old cottage.

The only question now was whether Steve dared to find him.

***

The moon was bright overhead as Steve crept through a woody area near the abandoned cottage. He'd left his bicycle half a mile away, hidden behind a hedge, so he could approach on foot through the tangled undergrowth without being seen. It had seemed like a good idea when he was planning, although now he was uncomfortably aware that there would be no quick getaway if anything went wrong.

He pushed that fear aside and settled into position. The cottage was easily visible through the bushes, standing isolated in a mess of brambles and weeds that might have been a garden once. The moonlight showed its rotting thatch and the wall at the end that had partially collapsed in the years since Steve had last been here. There had been a path leading to the front door when he'd been here with Bucky. Steve thought he could still see traces of it through the thorny bushes, if he squinted.

The cottage looked abandoned to a casual glance, but Steve's sharp eyes caught a curl of smoke from the chimney. Why would there be a fire burning in a disused building in the middle of nowhere?

Over the next few hours, Steve thought he saw occasional glimpses of movement in the single dark window. Nothing more than shifting shadows behind the remains of the boards covering it, which might have been his eyes playing tricks, but he didn't think so. The longer he waited and watched, the more convinced he became that he'd tracked the Winter Soldier's base.

In an ancient cottage he'd played in with Bucky, so long ago most people had probably forgotten about it. It had to be a sign.

Steve waited for most of the night, but nobody emerged from the building. He bicycled home to the pub and his bed a couple of hours before dawn, tired to the bone but more hopeful than he'd ever been.

Mrs Cooper frowned when he got home from his run the next day with dark circles under his eyes, but she put him to work scrubbing the bar's floor anyway.

***

For three nights, Steve watched the abandoned cottage and waited for a reply to his letter. He sometimes thought he caught a flicker of lamp light as he crawled into the bush he watched from, but it was always gone so fast he couldn't be sure.

On the fourth night, he fell asleep and woke up with a shadow looming over him.

Silver moonlight glinted on a metal arm, and the breeze caught long, messy brown hair and blew it across the Winter Soldier's face. Shadows hid his expression, but the slight tilt to his head made Steve think he was curious, rather than angry.

He hoped that wouldn't turn out to be wishful thinking.

Steve didn't move. His clothes felt clammy against his skin and a root was digging into his hip, making him wonder how he'd ever fallen asleep. Sheer exhaustion must have overwhelmed him, pulling him down into a doze despite the discomfort. He'd survived on short sleep many times while he served with the Fleet, and he knew from experience that it always caught up in the end.

It would have been less worrying if his exhaustion hadn't caught up to him when he was hiding a few feet away from the Winter Soldier's base.

After a long, tense silence, the Winter Soldier moved. Steve flinched instinctively, but no blows landed. The Winter Soldier simply crouched down and rested his forearms across his thighs, as if he was preparing for a casual conversation instead of planning to kick Steve around the place again.

"I know your face," the Winter Soldier said. His voice sounded rusty, as though he hadn't spoken since the last time they met. "Who are you?"

Steve kept his expression open and neutral, trying not to show the hope that suddenly surged in his chest. "I'm Steve. Steve Rogers. I think we used to know each other."

"Who is Bucky?" the Winter Soldier asked after another long pause.

"You, maybe. A long time ago."

"What am I?"

It was the question Steve had been struggling with for days, and he couldn't find words to answer at first. There weren't any simple answers, not for this. Steve could explain what Bucky had been, a long time ago, but he knew nothing about what might have happened to turn Bucky into the man crouched in front of him.

The Winter Soldier tilted his head back when no answer came, staring up at the sky as if all the clues to his existence could be read there. His hair fell back from his face and moonlight chased away the shadows, so his features almost seemed to glow silver. There were lines around his eyes and mouth that Steve had never seen before; lines of exhaustion and pain. A pale scar curved under his jaw and behind his ear, evidence that he'd fought hard against something once. Hard enough to leave scars. The metal and pistons that replaced his arm were more than enough to demonstrate that.

"You were my best friend," Steve said when the silence started to become too thick and oppressive. "We grew up around here. You and me, we used to play here even though people told us not to. I don't know what happened to you, but I know you're still in there somewhere and you remember this place."

There was no response for a long time. The Winter Soldier just stared up at the sky, the muscles in his jaw twitching as if he was gritting his teeth. Then he dipped his head down, letting shadows cover his face again, and Steve felt the hard gaze fixed on him even though he couldn't see it.

"I don't have friends," the Winter Soldier said. "I have a mission."

"What's your mission?"

"My mission..." There was a long pause before the Winter Soldier tried again. "My mission is to find something."

"Find what?"

The Winter Soldier lurched forward, too fast for Steve to defend himself from his attack. Steve's muscles tensed, expecting a blow, but the punch didn't land.

A kiss did. A harsh, painful press of lips that caught Steve so completely by surprise that he couldn't respond.

It was over before Steve's confused mind could process that it had happened. The Winter Soldier sprang up and disappeared while Steve was still sitting, frozen, on the ground. His mouth felt bruised from the impact.

Steve didn't move for a long time. When he did stand up, he touched a finger to his lip and hissed as a small cut stung.

He walked slowly back to his bicycle and rode home, without any awareness of what he was doing. Sleep consumed him as soon as he fell into bed, a sleep filled with dreams of fire and cold, cold water sucking him down to the depths.

***

There was a letter waiting for him when Steve returned from a long run the next morning. Mrs Cooper winked when she passed him the envelope, which still held a hint of fragrance on the paper and had been addressed in a flowing feminine hand. Steve was torn between relief and dread when he read the contents.


	6. Chapter 6

_5th May, 1905, London_

Steve set out for London early the next morning. Mrs Cooper packed more sandwiches than he could possibly eat, and she insisted on adding a huge slice of cake and half a dozen apples to his bag as well. The first half of the journey went smoothly enough, but the train was delayed at Andover Junction for over an hour, so it was mid-afternoon by the time it pulled into Waterloo, despite the early start.

He arrived in Berkeley Square just after four o'clock. The directions he'd been given were for a flat on the upper floor of a house tucked away in a corner. He'd imagined a cosy little place, but after he'd announced his name through a speaking tube and the door opened, he realised his mistake. The wide staircase was as far from the cramped boarding houses he'd lived in as possible, and the huge house had only been divided into three flats.

As he jogged up the stairs, Steve was uncomfortably aware that his suit was threadbare and he was dusty and sweaty from the journey. A maid in a pristine uniform opened the door, and Steve felt even more out of place. She didn't show any outward sign of shock or disgust, but she didn't offer him any refreshment when she told him to sit on a spindly chair by a closed door. Steve cautiously sat down with his small bag of food and clean clothes on his knees. The chair didn't collapse under his weight, but he couldn't relax into it.

Steve waited patiently. He could hear muffled voices through the door, but they were speaking too softly to make out any words. After a few minutes, it clicked open and Steve sprang to his feet.

A man emerged and paused in the doorway, turning back to offer his hand. He had a kind smile that Steve instinctively liked, although he couldn't have said why.

"I can't promise anything," the man said quietly, "but I'll do my best. You have my word."

"Thank you, Phil," a warm voice said. The door swung wider and Steve caught a glimpse of Peggy Carter's familiar face. "He won't listen to me anymore."

Phil chuckled. "Men never like to listen to their sisters, even when they're women like you."

"I've noticed," Peggy said dryly.

"I believe you have another appointment waiting," Phil said, with a nod to Steve. "Good afternoon."

Peggy shook his hand briskly and said the appropriate goodbyes. Steve wasn't surprised that Peggy didn't introduce him: judging by the man's clothes, they were from entirely different social circles. Phil nodded to Steve as he left, though, which was more than many people from his class would have done.

There were dark shadows under Peggy's eyes when she turned to Steve, but her smile was as bright as he remembered it. She shook his hand briskly before tugging him down to kiss his cheek.

Steve felt his face flush, and Peggy's smile widened.

"Hello, Steve," she said.

"Lady Carter," he said politely.

Peggy rolled her eyes. "It's still Peggy for you. Unless you want me to call you Captain?"

Steve shook his head. "I'm not a captain anymore. My ship is at the bottom of an ocean."

"You'll always be a captain," Peggy said, gesturing for him to follow her into her study. "It's something you were born to do, Steve."

"Someone else said the same thing to me not long ago," Steve said.

The study was surprisingly comfortable. Books lined the walls and there was a heavy desk at one end of the room that was covered with papers. Peggy didn't go to the desk; she sat down in a wingback chair next to the fireplace and gestured Steve to its mate.

"You received my letter," Peggy said, when Steve was settled.

"I did," Steve said. "What did you find out?"

Peggy raised an eyebrow. "Why on earth do you think I could find anything out about an old friend of yours?"

"Because a pretty girl like you doesn't spend all her time in an Aerial Fleet base for no good reason," Steve said bluntly. "You weren't hunting for a husband, so you must have been up to something else."

"How do you know I wasn't hunting for a husband?"

"You never flirted with any of us. And you don't seem to be married yet."

Peggy laughed. "I always said you were too observant. What do you think I was really doing?"

"You didn't seem like a foreign spy," Steve said. "So I always thought you were doing something for our side. Isn't your uncle something important in the Foreign Office?"

"He was," Peggy said. "He's retired now."

"And you're still working for them."

A knock at the door interrupted them before Peggy could reply. She called out, and the maid entered carrying a heavy tray, which she set down on a low table between the chairs. Peggy took her time pouring tea and putting toasted teacakes onto plates. Despite all the sandwiches he'd eaten on the train, Steve was grateful for the hot tea and food. His appetite seemed to have doubled since he'd gone down to Devon. It was probably all the physical work he was doing. He'd noticed that his shirts were getting tight around the chest and arms where they'd been baggy before.

Peggy watched him over the rim of her teacup while he quickly devoured two teacakes. Her eyes were sharp and it was a struggle to meet them.

Eventually she put down her empty cup and folded her hands in her lap. "Tell me, why are you suddenly interested in a soldier who died four years ago?"

Steve swallowed the last of his food too quickly, and it made his throat hurt. His voice sounded raspy when he said, "I don't know yet."

"You both grew up in Devon," she said. "Is this just nostalgia because you're at home for the first time since you joined the Fleet?"

"How did you know I hadn't been back?" Steve asked.

"I didn't until now," Peggy said with a small smile. "What are you up to?"

"I'm not sure whether I can tell you."

"Inspector Fury sent you down there, didn't he?"

"How did you--"

Peggy pursed her lips. "After I received your letter, I made some inquiries. You met with Fury and travelled down to Devon on the same day. It wasn't hard to make a connection."

Steve conceded the point with a shrug. "Alright, I've been looking into something for Inspector Fury. It's just a way to fill in some time until I can start my training."

"That might be how it started," Peggy said shrewdly, "but the fact that you've contacted me for information must mean it's turned into something more."

Instead of answering directly, Steve leaned forward. "You said you had information about Bucky. Sergeant Barnes. What did you find?"

Peggy searched his face for a long moment, and Steve shifted uncomfortably but refused to look down. He didn't know what she was looking for, but she must have found it. She stood up and crossed to her desk, her silk skirts rustling as she walked. There was a quiet click as she unlocked a drawer to pull out a thin folder. She relocked it before returned to her seat and setting the folder on her lap.

"Steve," she said softly.

Her eyes held too much sadness, and Steve suddenly felt cold despite the warmth from the hearth.

"What happened to Bucky?" he asked.

She took a deep breath, as if steadying herself to deliver bad news. "Your friend's commanding officer was killed three years ago. The official story is that his airship suffered a mechanical failure and fell out of the sky over the English Channel, on his way home from serving in Africa."

"Official story." Steve frowned. "What's the real story?"

"He was shot for crimes against the crown," Peggy said. "Treason, of a sort anyway."

"What does that have to do with Bucky?"

"It might have everything to do with it." Peggy smoothed a hand over the cover of the folder. "Someone noticed that his company seemed to have an unusually high number of soldiers killed or missing in action. They were supposed to be posted in one of the less volatile regions in Africa, and yet every month there were death notices going home."

Steve's fingers tightened on the arm of his chair, digging into the upholstery until they ached. "What was he doing?"

Peggy's lips tightened. "It took over a year before anyone took the reports seriously, and another six months before we managed to get anyone embedded high enough in his company to find out what was happening. Colonel Briggs owed huge sums of money. He seems to have had a gambling problem, and we believe he was an opium addict as well. He thought being posted to Africa would stop anyone pursuing him for the money, but it didn't work. They followed him there. It was a huge sum of money he owed, and going to Africa turned out to be exactly what his creditors wanted."

"What did he do?"

"He sold his men," Peggy said. "He filed reports saying they'd been killed or gone missing during skirmishes, and he sold them to pay off his debts."

Steve swallowed. He felt like he was going to be sick, and the irrational thought that he couldn't do that to Peggy's expensive carpet was the only thing that kept the bile down. "Sold them?"

"One or two each month," Peggy said. "We managed to recover a few of them after he was caught, but most of them were untraceable. His creditors disappeared into the ether, and they took their records of where the men had been sold with them. We've always suspected that the Russians bought some of them, but obviously we can't file an inquiry with their embassy without causing a diplomatic incident."

"Why the Russians?"

"Why were they sold there, or why do we suspect them?"

"Why do you suspect them?" Steve said after a moment's thought.

Peggy frowned. "Steve, I've already told you more than I should. The entire incident was sealed with the highest clearance levels."

"So you're not going to tell me?"

"I'm going to tell you, don't worry about that," Peggy said with a grim smile. "I'm just warning you about how much trouble we'll both be in if anyone finds out that I've told you."

Steve nodded. "Understood."

"There's a secret program in Russia. We're not even sure if the Tsar knows about it. Some of his military leaders are considerably more independent than they should be. There have been rumours about it in the intelligence community for years. Whispers about experimentation with memory and brain reprogramming. Even medical experiments, grafting mechanical limbs to living people, and not just to replace damaged ones."

Steve had to blink away the image of the Winter Soldier's metal arm. Everything was making too much sense.

Peggy's eyes were filled with sympathy, and her voice was gentle. "We've only discovered one person who broke their programming and escaped, and she won't talk to any of us. She disappeared."

"Why are you so sure Bucky must have been sold to them?" Steve asked. 

His voice broke on the last words, and Peggy wordlessly poured another cup of tea for him. She added a splash of something from a silver flask she dug out from beside the cushion of her chair. The tea stung and warmed him as he drank it.

"We started to hear about an asset with a metal arm a couple of years ago," Peggy said. "They called him 'The Englishman', no other name. He's supposed to be able to play at being English so well he almost sounds native. We suspected he might have been one of the men sold from Bucky's company, but nobody ever managed to capture him. He was too good. Too fast."

Steve took another sip of his tea before he asked, "What did he do?"

"He's the main suspect in three assassinations," Peggy said. "There may be more. We also think he's been responsible for a few thefts of unusual artefacts, but nobody is willing to admit they owned them, so that's been harder to confirm."

At least three assassinations, potentially several thefts. Steve didn't know what he'd been expecting when Peggy started talking, but it hadn't been this. Except...the man Steve had been tracking was strong enough and fast enough to be a killer.

So why hadn't he killed Steve?

"A few months ago, we started to hear rumours that the Russians had lost one of their assets," Peggy continued. "The man with a metal arm. Since then, we've picked up three Russian teams trying to infiltrate criminal organisations in London, and we have no way of knowing how many we missed. We think they're looking for their lost asset. Somehow, his programming started to break down and he disappeared. He won't stay hidden for much longer, not with most of the Russian intelligence network looking for him now."

"You think they're looking for Bucky." 

It wasn't a question, but Peggy nodded anyway.

"You've seen a man with your friend's face," she said. "And I believe he was one of the men Colonel Briggs sold. It would be too much of a coincidence for two men with the same face to be in the same situation."

"He came back to the place we grew up," Steve said.

"His programming is breaking down," Peggy said. "His childhood memories might be starting to slip through whatever they did to him. If your friend and the Russian asset are the same man, it would make sense for him to return to somewhere that feels familiar to him."

"He seems to be searching for something."

"It's possible that his last mission before his programming started to fail was another theft. He might still be trying to finish his mission, but his mind is so confused that he's only remembering parts of it."

"Why would his programming fail?"

Peggy shrugged gracefully. "I haven't the first idea. He might have seen something that triggered an old memory. Or perhaps whatever they did to him isn't as effective as they thought. Whatever it is, he needs to be brought in before the Russians get to him. If you can tell me everything you've learned, I can have men--"

"No!" Steve forced himself to lower his voice. "No, Peggy. If you send in troops, he'll bolt."

"He's dangerous. Perhaps even more dangerous now than he was when his programming was intact."

Steve shook his head stubbornly. "He knows me. He's recognised me. And he's had half a dozen chances to kill me, but so far I'm alive."

"You can't possibly plan to bring him in on your own," Peggy said, but her protest was only half-hearted.

"I can," Steve said. "I might be the only person who can do it. You've got to give me the chance."

She narrowed her eyes and stared at him for a long moment, before giving in with an audible sigh. "You'll have a chance. But if we get so much as a rumour about Russians within a hundred miles of your location, we'll do it my way instead."

"What will you do to him?" Steve leaned forward. "You won't send him to prison, will you? If the Russians did something to him, then he can't be responsible for the...assassinations...he committed. Can he?"

Peggy didn't smile, but something softened around her tired eyes. "We won't throw him in prison. We'll try to undo what the Russians did to him, and then we'll go from there."

"And if I can't bring him in?"

"Don't think about it," Peggy said firmly.

"You'll kill him."

"He's dangerous. If you can't bring him in, we can't leave him to roam around on his own. The Russians won't, either."

"So if I don't bring him in, you'll be racing the Russians to kill him." Steve nodded. "Nice to know where I stand."

"It's a last resort," Peggy said. "He's one of our own, and he was treated badly. We'll do everything we can to keep the Russians away from you for now. Bringing him in really is the best thing for him."

"I know." Steve set his empty cup down and stood up. "I should be going."

"Are you going to try to travel back tonight?" Peggy asked.

"I've got another old friend to see first," Steve said. "I'll travel tomorrow morning."

Peggy was quiet as she walked him to the door, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm before he left and held out the slim folder she'd been holding. "Here, it's everything we know about Colonel Briggs and the Russians. It's not much, but it might be useful. Make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Burn it when you've read it if you have to. Both of our necks are on the line if you let this get out."

Steve took the folder and tucked it into his bag. He frowned thoughtfully for a moment before asking, "Did Inspector Fury know about any of this before he sent me to investigate?"

Peggy didn't try to deny that she knew all about his conversation with Fury. "We think he knew some of it, but not the identity of the Winter Soldier."

"Thank you." Steve smiled and leaned down to kiss her cheek. "I'll send you reports."

"Make sure you encode them," Peggy said. "You must remember some of the old RAF codes."

"I do," Steve said.

"Good." Peggy kissed his cheek and gently pushed him out of the door. "Now, go and shout at Inspector Fury until you feel better."

Steve saluted her and went.

***

Inspector Fury must have left instructions about Steve, because he was shown straight up to the SHIELD offices even though it was well after six o'clock when he arrived at Scotland Yard. Only one desk was occupied again, this time by a bald man wearing wire-rimmed spectacles. He looked up from the document he was writing as Steve walked by, both eyebrows climbing towards his non-existent hairline.

Steve nodded to him politely and continued on to Fury's cramped office. Sometimes people recognised him from the newspapers, even though it had been nine months since anyone had last written about him. Fading away into obscurity suited Steve just fine.

Fury looked up as Steve entered and closed the door behind him. Their gazes locked for a long moment.

"Did you know when you sent me down there?" Steve asked, when the silence became too much to ignore.

Fury's expression didn't change. "Did I know what?"

"Who the Winter Soldier really was. How much did you know?"

"Sit down, Captain," Fury said, tiredly. "Care for a drink?"

He produced a bottle of whiskey from his desk drawer, and two glasses. Steve hesitated for a moment, but he was exhausted from the travel and his meeting with Peggy. Not physically exhausted, not the way he had been a few weeks ago. His mind felt drained and grey, and he couldn't maintain the anger he'd been trying to cling to while he walked from Berkeley Square. He set his bag and hat down in the corner and sat, accepting the glass from Fury with a murmured thanks that he couldn't stop himself giving. The amber liquid burned his throat as it went down.

"Everyone keeps giving me alcohol today," he said, as Fury refilled their glasses. "I'll end up drunk."

"You look like you could do with being a little drunk tonight," Fury said.

"Maybe." Steve tilted his glass slightly so he could watch the light from the gas lamp shift and sparkle in it. "How much did you know?"

Fury's chair creaked as he sat back in it. "More than I told you."

"I'm getting that now. Did you know who the Winter Soldier really was?"

"Not for sure," Fury said. "I heard some rumours a couple of years ago about an assassin who worked for the Russians. A man with a metal arm. When a friend in the Devon constabulary contacted me about some odd break-ins and sightings down there, I wondered if they were the same person."

"You sent me after an assassin?" Steve clenched his jaw for a moment, swallowing down the other words trying to escape. "Why?"

"The man I sent you after hadn't killed anyone," Fury said. "Not as far as any of us could tell. He seemed to be making a point of staying away from people. The worst he'd done was knock out a couple of ticket inspectors who got in his way when he was trying to jump off a train."

"Would you have sent me down there if you'd known who he was for sure?"

"That depends," Fury said. "Who is the Winter Soldier?"

Steve stared down at his drink again, debating how much he should tell. Fury hadn't been completely straight with him at the start, but did that really justify Steve keeping things back now?

"Why did you send me down there?" he asked eventually. "Why me in particular? Why not one of your detectives?"

"I needed someone who knew the area," Fury said. "A stranger turning up and asking a lot of questions would immediately stand out. You know what the gossip is like in a place like that. But one of their own coming back to convalesce from his wounds? A local hero? That stands out in a different way. I didn't want the Winter Soldier getting scared out of his rabbit hole and running. I wanted someone down there who knew the area, who could make inquiries without raising an alarm, and you walked into my office at exactly the right moment."

"You sent me after him because I knew the area, not because I might know him," Steve said quietly.

Fury's gaze sharpened. "Know him? Captain Rogers. Steve. Who is the Winter Soldier?"

Steve took a large gulp of whiskey and grimaced as it burned his throat. "An old friend."

Fury went completely still. He barely even seemed to be breathing, and that was when Steve was sure that he hadn't known about Bucky. It was a strange sort of relief to know that he'd been ignorant about that part of the assignment.

"Who?" Fury asked.

"James Buchanan Barnes," Steve said. "Bucky."

A frown momentarily creased Fury's brows. It was interesting to watch the moment when he made the connection: his lips tightened and his eye went wide. "The Channel Isle pirates. You dedicated your decimation of their airships to him."

Steve smiled bitterly. "I got Bucky's death notice and I had to do something. Taking out a fleet of pirates that had been preying on innocent fishermen and farmers seemed like a good idea at the time. I've never much liked bullies."

"They nearly court-martialled you and your men for disobeying orders."

"If the papers hadn't picked up the story so quickly," Steve said, "they probably would have."

"But he's not dead? How?"

"It's a long story, and I'm not authorised to tell you." Fury started to object, but Steve spoke over him. "Ask the Foreign Office if you really want to know what happened. They'll want to know how you know, and that will probably get more than just me into a lot of trouble."

"I'm going to want the full story eventually."

"And I'll tell you when I can."

Fury splashed more whiskey into their glasses and sighed. "I'll hold you to it. What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to find Bucky and bring him home," Steve said. "I've been promised some help with undoing what the Russians did to him if I can bring him in on my own."

"What can I do to help?"

He hadn't expected such an easy acceptance of his plan, or an offer of help. Not from Fury. Steve smiled at him hopefully. "I probably won't be back in time to start my training. If you could hold a place open for me in the future..."

"I'll make sure there's a training place for you when you're ready," Fury said. "Anything else?"

"Money," Steve said. "Just until everything is resolved. After that, I'll find a way to make ends meet until I'm working for you officially."

"I can do that," Fury said.

"And a place to stay," Steve said. "It's too late for me to get home tonight, and I'm too tired to sleep on a platform."

"You can sleep on my couch tonight," Fury said. "Unless you'd prefer a bed in the constables' dormitory?"

"Your couch would be fine."

"Have you eaten anything?" Fury asked.

Steve's stomach rumbled, even though it should have been satisfied with the sandwiches and teacakes he'd already eaten. He blamed the whiskey for the heat he could feel rising in his face. Fury chuckled, though, and his amused smile was somehow funny and terrifying all at once.

"I know a few places where the food won't kill you," Fury said. "Consider it a bonus for a job well done so far."

"I haven't done much so far."

"You've done more than I hoped for," Fury said seriously. "A lot more. If this is what you're capable of achieving without any police training, I look forward to seeing what you'll do when you're one of my detectives."

This time, Steve couldn't blame the whiskey for the heat he could feel in his face and ears. He might not have a ship anymore, but he could still be useful to the world. It was a good feeling.


	7. Chapter 7

_7th May, 1905, Duscombe_

Steve was late leaving London the next day, so it was opening time at the pub by the time he got to Duscombe. Even though every instinct screamed at him to head straight out to hunt down Bucky, the more rational portion of his mind pointed out that he was tired and it would be better if he started fresh after a full night's sleep.

He wasn't even sure if Bucky would still be out at the cottage on the edge of the moor. If he had any sense, he would have moved his base the moment he knew Steve had found him.

Then again, Bucky had never been the sensible one when they were young. It was part of what had always got them both in trouble: Bucky would take a risk--like trying to pick just a few more apples after they'd heard Farmer Marsh's dogs--and Steve would stay with him because that was what friends did.

Bucky might have changed, might have grown an ounce of sense, but Steve hadn't been there to see the changes, so he didn't know.

Except, Steve knew a few things. Bucky hadn't tried to kill him. Bucky had even seemed to recognise him the last time. Parts of Bucky were still there deep inside the Winter Soldier, which meant there was still hope for him. For both of them.

Steve helped out behind the bar until Mrs Cooper shooed him to bed, citing the dark circles under his eyes. He'd planned to go over all his maps and accounts again before he went to sleep, but somehow he sat down and the next thing he knew, it was well after dawn and he'd slept the night in his clothes.

Oddly, the bedroom window was open. Steve was almost sure he hadn't had time to open it before he passed out. He tried to think back while he splashed water on his face to chase away the last of the sleepiness, but the last few minutes after he left the bar were fuzzy and he couldn't be sure.

Mrs Cooper was pinning on her hat when he returned from his morning run. She sighed at his sweaty face. "I suppose you won't be joining us at church again."

Steve took the hint and washed up as fast as he could, so he was still fixing his collar to his last clean shirt when he ran downstairs. His good jacket was dusty from travelling, as was his hat, but Mrs Cooper nodded approvingly. He was still one of the better dressed people in the church. Most of the local farmhands didn't have collars at all, and his threadbare jacket was newer than everyone else's.

Later, he couldn't have told anyone what the sermon had been about or which hymns they'd sung. His mind drifted aimlessly between half a dozen thoughts, most of them centring around how to find Bucky now that he knew Steve was hunting him.

By the time Mrs Cooper was opening the door to the pub after church, he was no closer to an answer.

"Do you mind if I take a walk before lunch?" he asked at the door.

She searched his face, her lips tightening at something she found there. "I'll keep something hot for you if you're late," was all she said, though.

He smiled his thanks and hurried to his attic room to put away his collar and tie. There was no point in getting them dusty and sweaty. The day was already warm, and promised to get hotter as the afternoon went on. A thought came to him as he was leaving, and he paused. The stub of a candle was still sitting in the holder by his bed.

A minute later, he jogged out of the pub with the candle and a book of matches in his pocket.

For a while, he wandered aimlessly, trying to pretend that he was going anywhere except the cottage he'd grown up in. When he couldn't pretend any more, he hesitated at the gate. Weeds still covered both gardens, but some of them had bloomed into bright flowers that filled the air with perfume. Whoever rented the cottages next would have a hard time taming the gardens, but they'd find some good surprises when they did.

The key hadn't been moved since his last visit, so Steve let himself in quietly and closed the door behind him. Green light filtered through overgrown vines around the windows, rippling off the whitewashed walls in ever-changing patterns. The damp, musty smell of disuse still hung in the air, and the only footprints in the dust were Steve's.

It had always been a bright, happy home. A good place to grow up, even though money had been scarce. Someone in the village had always made sure they had enough food, usually grateful husbands who knew their wives would have had a hard birth without Mrs Rogers' help.

The creaking stairs sounded too loud in the deserted cottage, and Steve winced as he climbed up. He pushed open the door at the top and lit the candle, holding it up carefully so he could look around. The narrow bed he'd slept in was still tucked away at one end of the room; he hadn't bothered trying to move it when he closed up the cottage after the funeral and nobody else had either. It had probably been built up here, because he couldn't see how it would ever fit down the staircase.

It was hard to believe that he and Bucky had slept in that bed together. When they were children, maybe it had been comfortable. But two mostly grown teenaged boys would have been packed together on it like sardines. Steve couldn't remember being uncomfortable; he'd always been grateful for the extra warmth in the winter.

Steve crossed the room and sat down on the bed, ducking his head to avoiding knocking it against the low ceiling. The tiny passage between this room and the one next door was visible from here, a dark space that looked like it could lead anywhere. His shoulders were too wide to fit through it now, and he wondered how Bucky had ever managed it after he'd started to grow and fill out. Bucky had been like an eel, though, squirming through spaces nobody should fit through.

He wondered now whether anyone had ever realised how often they visited each other after they were supposed to be asleep. If anyone had known that they rarely slept alone. Even on the nights when it was too hot to crowd into a single bed, one of them had usually slept sprawled on the other's floor.

It probably hadn't been a secret. They'd thought it was, but Steve was sure his mother and Bucky's grandparents had known. 

He was sure they hadn't known about the summer before Bucky left to join the Army. When they'd spent every evening after lights out practising for the girls they'd be kissing after Bucky had his red coat, and Steve...they'd always pretended Steve would find a way to fight with Bucky, even though they'd thought it was impossible.

Steve couldn't remember which of them came up with the kissing practise idea anymore. It had seemed like such a great idea, so logical, because although the local girls were eager enough, they all had fathers. Fathers with guns and a lot of poaching experience. So they'd practised with each other, and Steve didn't know why they'd carried on after a few tries, but they had.

They'd practised for hours some evenings, and Steve sometimes thought he hadn't kissed anyone better than Bucky since.

Then Bucky had taken the shilling and marched away with the recruiters. He'd only come back once, to help Steve bury his mother, and they'd been careful not to talk about the kissing. Even when Bucky crawled into Steve's bed and held him while he cried for her that night, they hadn't talked about it.

Steve had never asked Bucky whether he really had permission to leave his base. A week later, he'd sent Bucky the leaflet about the new Aerial Fleet, who were looking for men exactly like Steve to join up. Bucky hadn't replied for two months, and Steve hadn't wanted to think about the idea that maybe Bucky had been serving some kind of punishment for coming to the funeral. By the time he got up the courage to ask, Bucky's company was on a ship for Africa. Letters became scarce after that, and Bucky didn't waste space talking about the past.

Steve's eyes felt sore. He scrubbed a hand over them, and blamed it on the dust and the candle smoke.

He was about to stand up to leave when he heard a sound. It was soft, too soft, but he could have sworn he'd heard something move on the other side of the passageway beside him.

Hot wax dripped down the candle and stung his hand as he tried to crane his neck around and looked through the dark gap in the wall. The candle light didn't penetrate far enough, though. All he could see was darkness.

Steve stayed still for a long time, until the candle had burned down so far it guttered and went out. Nothing stirred on the other side of the wall.

In the distance, a bell rang the hour, and Steve reluctantly stood up. If Mrs Cooper had kept something hot for him, it would be a dried out mess by now. He felt his way across the dark room carefully and hurried down the stairs. The afternoon sun was hot when he got outside and sweat instantly prickled against his skin. There were red marks on his hand where the candle's wax had burned him.

Steve glanced at the other cottage before he left, but it looked as dead and empty as ever.

***

"That Winter Soldier creature did it, I'd bet my next pint on it," Toothless George said firmly.

Steve almost dropped the tankards he was setting down on the Georges' table as the words sent a cold chill down his spine. He hadn't picked up any gossip about Bucky since he'd got back from London, not even a hint of a sighting. No break-ins, no train raids, no mysterious disappearances of goods from grocers and butchers. Nothing.

And he'd been listening hard everywhere he went, whether he was hauling stone for Old Man Ridham or buying meat for Mrs Cooper. There hadn't been anything for three days.

He hadn't got up the courage to check the cottage on the edge of the moor yet. Going out there and getting confirmation that Bucky was gone would be the sensible, logical next step. Every time he started out, though, there had been a cold lump of fear in his chest and he'd turned back. With Bucky's changed patterns, the cottage was the last link he had. If he confirmed Bucky wasn't there, Steve didn't know how to start looking again. At least if he didn't confirm it, he could pretend to himself that there was still hope.

"Can't have been," Middle George said. He put down a domino with a decisive click. "Winter Soldier ain't never raided a house before. Leopards don't change their spots."

"He broke in and ransacked, didn't take nowt," Toothless George insisted. "That's the Winter Soldier all over. Big house like that? Got to be some silver he could hock for a pretty penny, but he walked away empty-handed."

"So says his lordship," Middle George said. "He's lying through his teeth, he is. Doesn't want to advertise to everyone that he got beaten. So he's putting out word that his dogs chased the burglariser off, instead of admitting he's lost something. I'll stake a pint on that."

Steve slowly collected up the empties, but all three Georges turned their attention back to the game without further comment. He carried the tankards back to the bar and gathered up a few more, taking them out to the kitchen to wash them. Mrs Cooper was too busy serving a thirsty group of farmhands to notice that anything was wrong.

He washed and dried methodically, without really seeing what he was doing. Toothless George had to be right, it had to be Bucky out there. He was still looking for something, and he'd switched his attention to the big houses instead of museums and trains.

Except that would make it even harder to trace him, unless the servants gossiped. Middle George was right; no rich man would let the county at large know his house had been broken into, even if the invader didn't take anything.

Steve couldn't put it off any longer. He had to go out to the cottage on the edge of the moor, and he had to do it as soon as possible. Part of him wanted to go straight out tonight, but that would be foolish. If Bucky was still using the cottage, he probably wouldn't be there right now. He'd be out tracking his next target.

Tomorrow, Steve told himself. He'd go out there tomorrow and try to catch Bucky in his nest if it was possible. At least then he'd know how impossible the task of bringing Bucky in really was.

***

The good weather had broken, so Steve bicycled out to the cottage on the edge of the moor under threatening skies. A cold breeze whipped through his hair as he rode, and he was grateful for the old leather airship jacket he'd pulled on before he left. His goggles bounced against his chest where they hung around his neck.

He wasn't sure why he'd pulled his old gear out from the bottom of his bag this morning. It had felt like the right time, somehow, and the familiar weight of the leather on his shoulders was comforting. It had been too heavy a couple of months ago, dragging at him when he tried to pull it on. Every time he'd caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, the sight of it bagging out around his thin frame had been too depressing for words. So he'd thrust it down to the bottom of his bag as soon as he was released from the military hospital, and he hadn't looked at it since.

It was a sign of how much muscle he'd rebuilt over the last few weeks that it fitted comfortably again.

He rode as fast as he could, eyeing the dark clouds overhead and putting on extra bursts of speed whenever they seemed to get lower. There would be rain sometime soon and he didn't want to get caught out in it, but he couldn't keep putting this off. He had to do this today, or he never would.

There was no sense trying to creep up to the cottage in broad daylight, however murky it was, so Steve rode right up to the gate and leaned the bicycle against the wall. Thorns tore at his trousers as he picked his way down the overgrown path, but his leather jacket protected his arms from the worst of it. His trousers were old and shabby, so the new rips in them didn't worry him too much. He'd sew them up later, and they wouldn't look any worse than they'd started out.

The cottage door swung open easily, and Steve let out a breath he hadn't been aware that he was holding. Bucky was gone. He wouldn't have left the door unlatched if he was still living there.

Steve went inside anyway. Bucky might have left some clues about where he would go next. Even if he hadn't, there was no point riding all the way out here and not looking around. He stepped inside and squinted into the dimly lit room for a minute, before getting a candle and matches out of his jacket pocket. 

The flickering flame revealed an empty, dust covered room that had obviously lain mostly undisturbed since Steve and Bucky played there years ago. Footprints tracked through the dust to a door that probably led into a kitchen, but there weren't enough marks for it to be a door that Bucky regularly used. Steve's theory that he had another way into the cottage had to be right. 

He followed the footprints into the back room, which was a kitchen as he'd predicted. There was plenty of evidence of Bucky's occupation there, and it looked like Bucky had cleared out in a hurry. Jars and cans of food were still stacked in one corner, and the fire had been doused but the hearth hadn't been cleaned out. A dirty plate was still sitting on the kitchen table, and a heel of bread had been left to go mouldy on a cutting board.

The kitchen table, a couple of chairs, and a dresser were the only furniture left in the kitchen, so it didn't take long to methodically search every drawer. Steve didn't find anything useful, not even when he poked through the ashes in the fire looking for burned papers. A railway timetable had been left in one of the dresser drawers, but that wasn't very useful because Bucky hadn't marked it in any way.

The stairs that had once led up to the attic were rotten, and Steve's foot went straight through the first step when he tried to climb them. He tested a couple of the other steps, which both crumbled under his fingers, and concluded that Bucky couldn't have gone up there.

Steve was taking one last look around the kitchen when the light from his candle caught on a flash of something white, poking out from between two stones in the wall near the hearth. He frowned and moved closer, leaning down for a closer look. It seemed to be a thin piece of folded card. Steve carefully pried it out, his fingers shaking for reasons he didn't want to examine too closely.

It was the bill from a performance of Carmen at the Royal Opera House, from a date in July of 1904. Bucky must have been there for something connected to his mission, although Steve couldn't understand what he would have been doing at an opera. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor when he opened it, and he snatched it up quickly.

Steve recognised the paper. It was a cutting from _The London Times_ reporting the air battle over the North Sea. There was a picture of him at the top of the article, taken when he received his medal for capturing the Channel Island pirates. The fall of the _America_ and his miraculous survival was the most prominent part of the article, which he'd felt guilty about for weeks after people showed it to him. So many other men had died that day, but he was declared the hero of the affair, even though the Royal Aerial Fleet had been forced to limp home with half her ships either damaged or destroyed.

Bucky had kept this clipping and, from the wear on the folds, he'd taken it out and looked at it frequently.

Steve's chest suddenly felt too tight and his heart was racing so fast it made him feel lightheaded. He wasn't aware of stumbling through the cottage until the cold breeze outside hit him in the face, sharp as a knife.

He bent over, hands on his knees, and tried to suck in air, even though his throat seemed to be constricting and his lungs were fighting him for every breath. It took him a minute to realise that there were tears running down his face, and he wasn't sure whether he was crying for himself or for Bucky.

Bucky had kept that tattered bit of newsprint for months, because it meant something to him. It had to. Otherwise, why would he have pressed it between the two halves of a playbill? Why would he have hidden it so carefully?

Had he seen the article, with its photograph of Steve at the top, and recognised him?

If Steve counted back the months carefully, Bucky's first appearance in Devon was only a few weeks after the _America's_ crash, and he couldn't believe that the two events were unconnected. He wouldn't believe.

A low roll of thunder brought Steve's head up, and he noticed, for the first time, that the clouds were now even lower than they'd been when he rode out here. He counted in his head and grimaced when a flash of lightning lit up the sky five seconds later. The storm wasn't far off now, and it was getting closer.

He carefully smoothed out the clipping and slipped it inside the playbill again. After a moment's hesitation, he tucked it into a pocket inside his leather jacket. Bucky must have abandoned the cottage in even more of a hurry than Steve had anticipated to have left it behind. Part of Steve wanted to put it back, in case Bucky came back and searched for it, but his instincts said that he'd see Bucky again somehow.

He could return it then, and maybe it would be the key to unlocking the rest of Bucky's memories. If they were still there.

Steve dismissed that last thought immediately. Of course Bucky was still there, somewhere inside all the programming and whatever else had been done to him. He just needed to find a way the break through and help him.

The wind was picking up as Steve fought his way down the path back to his bike, adding a few new tears to his trousers and some scratches on his hands as he went. He rode as fast as he could back to Duscombe, but the first heavy drops of rain hit his face anyway as he passed his childhood cottage. He was shivering and soaked by the time he stumbled into the pub.

The playbill with its precious scrap of newspaper inside was perfectly dry when Steve pulled it out of his jacket. Steve breathed a sigh of relief and tucked it away in a drawer under his socks.

***

Steve woke up from another nightmare about fire and icy water sucking him down into darkness. His heart was hammering in his chest and cold sweat chilled his skin, despite the heavy blankets on the bed. Waking up from those dreams was always bad, maybe always would be, but something felt different this time.

He was being watched.

The wind and rain sounded too loud, and a damp breeze brushed his face. He'd checked the window before he went to bed. It should have been closed. The storm had been raging all day--even the three Georges hadn't ventured out for a drink--and Steve had checked the window because the catch was loose and he didn't want to risk it flying open in the middle of the night. Sudden loud noises when he was asleep could be a problem.

But the window was definitely open.

Steve risked opening his eyes a little, trying to preserve the illusion that he was asleep for a while. There was a dark shape in the corner, but he couldn't see enough to work out what it was.

He knew anyway. It had to be Bucky. Who else could it be?

"I know you're awake," Bucky said. His voice sounded rusty again, and Steve wondered if this was the first time he'd spoken since the night outside his cottage. "Your breathing changed."

Steve sat up, and the cold breeze hit the sweat on his back, making him shiver. "What are you doing here?"

There was a long pause before Bucky said, "I don't know."

"You climbed through my window."

"You broke into my place."

Steve nodded. "You'd already abandoned it. Were you watching it?"

"I figured you'd be back." The dark shape moved. It might have been a shrug. "I wanted to know where you came from. I followed you."

"It was raining," Steve said. "And I was riding."

"I can run fast," Bucky said. "And I've been rained on before. I don't melt."

"What about your arm? Doesn't it rust?"

Steve tensed as the shadows in the corner shifted and resolved into Bucky's form, prowling across the room. But all he did was stop by the bed and tug off his glove, offering his hand to Steve.

It was too dark to see more than outlines. Steve twisted around, reaching for the candle and matches he'd left just out of reach. Bucky seemed to work out what he was trying to do, because he ducked to the side and the candle and matches dropped into Steve's lap a moment later.

Steve lit the candle and allowed Bucky to see his smile. "Thanks."

There was no response, but Steve hadn't really expected one. The warm glow from the flame flickered on Bucky's face, half-hidden under his tangled hair. The scar under his jaw was almost hidden by thick stubble and there were lines between his brows and around his eyes, lines that might have been tension, or pain, or a mixture of both. Steve's fingers suddenly itched to touch those lines, to smooth them away. Years ago he might have done it, and Bucky would have grinned and batted his hand away, while looking quietly pleased that Steve cared enough to try. This Bucky wouldn't smile if Steve tried it, so he clutched the candle holder tightly until the urge passed.

Bucky was still holding out his metal hand. The sleeve of his leather coat was pushed up far enough to expose most of his forearm. It was the first time Steve had really seen the arm, when it wasn't trying to kill him, and he sucked in a quick breath.

It was a work of art.

The steel plates had been etched with intricate, swirling patterns, even the tiny ones covering his fingers. Bucky flexed his fingers and Steve could see the motion of the tiny gears and pistons between the joints, the candlelight catching and reflecting off the brass. There were scratches at the edges of some of the plates, and the gears at the base of his thumb looked like dull iron instead of brass. It seemed a shame that such a beautiful display of workmanship had been contaminated with less perfect parts when he'd needed repairs.

Steve reached out without even thinking about it, touching the edge of a plate at Bucky's wrist with curious fingers.

Bucky moved so fast, Steve barely saw it. His wrist was suddenly caught in Bucky's hand, metal digging into his flesh as Bucky squeezed. There was no expression on Bucky's face and Steve grunted as pain shot down his arm.

The pressure abruptly eased, although Bucky didn't release him. Bucky cocked his head, the lines between his brows deepening. "Did I hurt you?"

"Yes," Steve said. He had to fight the urge to pull his hand free from the loose grip. "Why did you stop?"

"I don't..." Bucky trailed off, looking confused. He lifted Steve's hand and turned it over, apparently fascinated by the sight of his metal fingers against Steve's skin. "I know your face."

A surge of hope fluttered in Steve's chest. "Yes, you do. We grew up here. In this village. You and me, we knew each other better than anyone else."

"I've seen your face before," Bucky said.

"Yes," Steve said.

Bucky's fingers dug into Steve's wrist painfully again, but it passed almost immediately. "I saw your face...somewhere else. And I knew you."

Steve hardly dared to breathe. "You saw my face in a newspaper."

"Yes." It was barely a whisper this time. "I lost it."

"I found it for you," Steve said. "In your cottage. You left it behind. You can have it back, if you want."

Bucky seemed to study his face for a long moment. Too long. Steve wondered what he saw there. What he was looking for. Steve tried to keep his expression open and hopeful, but he couldn't tell whether Bucky was seeing other things there as well. Things he'd been trying to keep buried for so long it had become second nature, until he suddenly had Bucky alive and whole in front of him. It felt like his heart had forgotten how to beat evenly, and his breathing was coming in gasps.

Bucky's hand tightened around his wrist again, but not painfully this time. It was as though he was afraid that Steve would pull away, and he was trying to keep him pinned in place. Steve might have laughed if the moment hadn't been so intense, because pulling away was the last thing he would ever do.

When Bucky leaned down, Steve wasn't surprised. He simply tilted his head slightly and closed his eyes when Bucky kissed him.

It only lasted a moment, but it felt like a lifetime. Bucky's mouth was warmer and harder than Steve remembered. Not bruising like the last time, but not the gentle, cautious kisses they'd shared years ago during their "practices". He almost tried to follow Bucky when he retreated, aching for another taste, but Steve sensed that would only make Bucky run faster than before.

"I remember doing this before," Bucky said. His voice had turned hoarse and it shook on the last word. "You said we weren't like that, but I remember."

"It's difficult to explain," Steve said. "We didn't know what we were doing. We never talked about it."

"Why?"

"I don't know. We just...didn't."

"But we were friends," Bucky said. He sounded thoughtful, as though he was trying to puzzle out how all the disconnected fragments of his memories were supposed to fit together.

"The best of friends," Steve said. "When you died..." He stopped to clear his throat. "When you died, it was like losing a part of myself. Nobody else has ever been that for me."

Bucky eyes dipped down to his metal arm. Steve could have kicked himself for the words he'd chosen so thoughtlessly, but when Bucky looked up again, there was a flicker of an emotion Steve hadn't seen there for a long time. The cold anger melted away for a moment, replaced by a twitch of rueful humour that was so much like the old Bucky that Steve had to catch his breath.

He was right. Bucky was still somewhere inside the Winter Soldier. Buried deep, so deep it could take years to fight free, but he was in there and that meant Steve could find him again.

It only lasted a moment before Bucky's face became shuttered and cold again. "I died."

"That's what we were told," Steve said. "That's why I never came for you. I'm so sorry for that, Bucky. If I'd known, nothing would have kept me away. I would have got you out before they could do all this to you, even if I'd had to steal a ship to get there."

Bucky tilted his head again, and this time the flicker of emotion Steve caught was something far more intense than humour. It was something huge and terrifying, but Bucky closed down too fast for Steve to identify it. Whatever it had been, it made his heart race and shivers run down his spine.

"I'm not him," Bucky said. "The boy you remember. I'm not him anymore. I've done things."

"I know. Believe me, I know. But he's there somewhere inside you, and I'm going to help you find him again. If you'll let me."

"What if I don't want you to?"

Steve nodded at the metal fingers still clasping his wrist, wrapped there gently now, instead of painfully tight. "You could have broken my wrist. You could have killed me in my sleep. But you didn't."

"You're not my mission."

"Has that stopped you before?"

There was no reply, apart from a slight tightening around Bucky's lips. He lifted his flesh and blood hand, and Steve forced himself not to brace for a blow, even though half his instincts screamed at him to do it. A gentle finger touched his jaw, feather-soft, and Steve realised after a moment that Bucky was tracing the faded yellow outline of an old bruise.

"Bucky," Steve whispered.

The kiss this time was so soft that Steve might have thought he was imagining the feel of Bucky's lips, if he hadn't kept his eyes open. Bucky was frowning again, as if he was trying to capture a thought or a memory. Steve sighed and pressed closer, trying to deepen the kiss, but a sound outside startled him.

A dog barked somewhere and the rain started hammering against the roof harder than ever. Bucky sprang away, dropping Steve's wrist, and he was halfway to the window before Steve could move.

"Wait!" Steve said, and Bucky paused with a foot on the window sill. "Wait, I have something of yours."

He threw back the covers and scrambled out of bed, setting the candle beside his water basin. Bucky tensed and a knife appeared in his hand, too fast for Steve to see where he pulled it from.

Steve froze. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I was just getting your picture."

The knife disappeared somewhere inside Bucky's jacket, and he straightened up, his body still tense and wary. Steve moved smoothly and slowly, trying to project calm, as he crossed to the dresser and pulled out the folded playbill from underneath his socks. He held it out as he approached Bucky and stopped just inside arm's reach.

A muscle in Bucky's jaw twitched as he took the slim bit of card. He didn't look inside before tucking it inside his jacket. Steve wasn't sure whether that was because he trusted that the clipping would be inside, or because he didn't dare take his eyes off Steve.

"Where are you staying?" Steve asked.

Bucky's lips tightened for a moment. "Around."

"As long as you have a roof over your head," Steve said. "Can I get anything for you? Food?"

"No."

"There are people coming for you. I don't know when, but they'll find you eventually."

Bucky nodded jerkily. "I know. My mission was...I know, they'll come for me."

Steve wanted to ask, again, what Bucky's mission was. Had been. But he was starting to suspect that even Bucky didn't know anymore, or at least, that Bucky's memories had splintered too badly for what remained of his mission to make sense. His old memories seemed to be getting stronger, which Steve told himself was a good thing, but they seemed to be making a mess of his recent ones and that only made him more vulnerable. If he could only make sense of parts of his programming, were there things buried in the confusion that would help him to stay ahead of his old controllers?

There was no sense asking about any of it, though. It would only make Bucky run harder. So instead, Steve asked, "Will I see you again?"

"Maybe."

Bucky was eel-fast as he climbed out of the window, slithering through the narrow opening that Steve would have sworn a grown man couldn't climb through. By the time Steve reached it, Bucky was already bouncing up from the drop and running away. He disappeared into the rain almost immediately.

Steve stood at his window for a while, his hands and arms steadily getting wetter as wind blew the rain inside. Eventually he pulled the window mostly shut, and towelled off roughly before going to bed.

His dreams for the rest of the night were restless and unsettled, but he didn't dream of the fire and the icy water sucking him down.


	8. Chapter 8

_12th May, 1905, Duscombe_

Everything stayed quiet for several days. After such a broken night of sleep, Steve spent the day after Bucky's midnight visit pottering around doing odd jobs for Mrs Cooper in the pub. He served in the bar in the evenings, pouring pints of beer and cider and listening for anything that might indicate Bucky was active again.

He worked on the Ridham farm, hauling stone and pulling weeds, and he hefted bags of wheat and flour at the mill. All the time, he had half an ear open for any gossip that passed through, but there was nothing.

By the end of the week, he felt ready to burst out of his skin from the frustration of not knowing.

Not knowing where Bucky was.

Not knowing what Bucky was planning.

Not knowing whether there was another force out there, coming for Bucky.

He'd always been able to do something before. Take his ship out to patrol, or to fight the pirates that ransacked the coastlines and small islands when they thought the Aerial Fleet was busy. Organise training exercises. He wasn't used to just waiting.

He had a few ideas for where he could look for Bucky, but he didn't want to chase him out of another hiding hole unless he absolutely had to. If he did it too often, Bucky might hide so well that Steve would never find him. Or he might leave the area completely.

Steve dismissed that fear easily most of the time. Something had drawn Bucky back to the area, even with most of his memories missing, and that had to be a powerful instinct to have overridden his mission. In the calm light of day, Steve could easily rationalise that and feel comforted.

It was in the middle of the night that he always started to doubt. When the darkness crept in and filled his mind with other unhappy memories; that was when he started to fear that he'd never see Bucky again.

"You're brooding again," Mrs Cooper said one night, as she nudged him out of the way of the beer tap with her hip. "Take some of the glasses out to wash, my dear, before your black mood infects my customers, hmm?"

Steve nodded and began collecting up empties, forcing himself to smile as he went. The pub was busy with newly paid farmhands, and they were all determined to drink their way through their pennies before closing time. He was stacking glasses at an empty table in the corner when a snippet of conversation caught his ear.

"--foreigner away with a clip round his ear, or I should have."

Steve looked up sharply, but he hadn't recognised the voice and he couldn't see who might have spoken. The nearest group of men were two clerks from the grocer's, and the fishmonger's boy, and none of them had voices deep enough to sound right. Two of them didn't even look old enough to have started shaving yet.

He moved through the pub slowly, using the excuse of picking up glasses to linger and eavesdrop at tables, but he didn't hear that voice again. He didn't hear anyone talking about foreigners, either, and after a while he felt too uncomfortable about listening to keep doing it.

As he washed and dried the glasses, he thought about it more carefully. Around here, a foreigner could be a Russian, or it could just be someone from London or Birmingham. Someone from _away_ , speaking in a different accent and using strange words. That was all it took around here, because most people never went further from the village than Exeter, and even that only happened when someone had to appear in court or do something equally official. Otherwise, most people stayed within a few miles of their homes.

But it could mean something more. That thought sent a chill down Steve's spine.

After the pub closed and he'd helped to clean up, he retreated to his room and set to work with pen and ink. It took over an hour to get the words right and put them into code, but he felt easier in his mind when the neatly addressed letter was tucked into a pocket, ready to post tomorrow.

Even with that thought to comfort him, he still lay awake for hours, and he woke up for his morning run with gritty eyes and a stuffy head.

***

There was a letter waiting on the kitchen table when Steve returned from his morning run a couple of days later. The address was in Peggy's elegant hand, and he could still smell a hint of her perfume on the envelope. Mrs Cooper winked at him when he put it in his pocket.

"Is she nice, your girl in London?" she asked, as she served porridge and nudged the honey pot over to him.

Steve smiled. "She's nice, but she's not my girl."

"Too fancy for the likes of us? I've seen her handwriting. That's proper gentry writing."

"Too busy," Steve said. "She could have her pick of anyone, but I don't think she wants to."

Mrs Cooper poured cream on her porridge. "What does she do that she's too busy to settle with a man? She's not one of those society ladies, always fluttering about tea parties and balls with her head empty. I know you too well, to think you'd be flirting with someone like that."

"I'm not flirting." Steve hadn't thought about flirting with Peggy once since the days at the airship base, although he'd definitely tried to flirt a little back then. It had never really worked, or maybe he'd never learned how to read her when it did. "We're writing letters, that's all."

"No man ever 'just' writes letters to a woman," Mrs Cooper said.

"Well, I do," Steve said. "Peggy--Lady Carter--is one of those society ladies, but I'm not sure how much fluttering she does. It's not really her style."

Mrs Cooper lifted an eyebrow. "Lady Carter? You did start to move in some grand circles when you left us."

"Not really. Peggy was an exception."

"Ah."

Mrs Cooper smiled, smug and happy, and Steve frowned at her. "She's not my girl."

"Whatever you say, my dear. Whatever you say."

He wasn't sure why the thought of Peggy as his girl made him want to laugh a little hysterically. Peggy was great, he'd always thought so, but he'd never been able to see himself settling down with her. The brief flirtation they'd enjoyed years ago had been exactly that: some flirtatious conversations that hadn't even led to a kiss.

Peggy wasn't the person he could see himself sitting down to breakfast with in five years, or kissing goodnight in ten years. Or, if he lived that long, holding hands with in forty years when they were too old and too tired for anything more exciting. He'd never had a clear picture of the person he imagined all that with.

Except sometimes, even after Bucky died, he'd wondered what it would be like to have all that with Bucky. It had always seemed like such a strange vision for his future, but it had been oddly comforting as well.

Not that he hadn't heard of a few fellows--even a couple of lieutenants on the first ship he'd served on--who did exactly that. Who kept each other company even after they retired from the Fleet, and never married a girl at all. Steve wasn't a complete innocent; he knew what those men were to each other, and he'd sometimes wished that he could have talked to Bucky about it all before he went to Africa.

Maybe those kisses had meant more than just practice to Bucky, too, and Steve wondered now why he hadn't talked to Bucky about everything when he had the chance.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Mrs Cooper said.

Steve looked down and realised he'd absently scraped his bowl clean. He sent her a quick, reassuring smile. "I'm sorry. It wasn't anything important. Is there anything you need me to do today?"

She studied him for a moment, her lips flattening, but she seemed to dismiss whatever she was worrying about. "Nothing that can't wait. You go and read your letter; I can see you're itching to. Maybe after, you could help me with the laundry, if you're that desperate to be useful today."

Steve thanked her quickly and escaped. He waited until he was safely in his bedroom before tearing the letter open. It couldn't be a response to the one he'd sent. The post mark was from the last collection on Saturday, the day he'd posted his letter to her, for a start. While he admired the efficiency of the Royal Mail, he couldn't imagine that his letter to her had arrived on the day he sent it. Not from a small town in Devon all the way to London.

The paper Peggy had used was thick, creamy, and expensive. Her handwriting was as elegant inside as it had been on the address, but Steve caught a hint of urgency in the sharp lines and the deep grooves her pen had made as she wrote. It took him a few minutes to puzzle out the code she'd used, and he had to resort to figuring it out on scrap of paper.

When he read through the decoded message, though, his heart seemed to miss a beat and the porridge he'd eaten turned into a cold, heavy lump in his stomach.

> _Steve,_
> 
> _We picked up three Russians, in Portsmouth today. They were making inquiries about routes to Exeter and beyond. At least one, possibly more, escaped our net. I'm sorry, but you're running out of time._
> 
> _Send word as soon as you can,_  
>  _Peggy._

***

There were half a dozen places Bucky could be. More, probably, if Steve thought about it for more than a couple of minutes. They'd explored everywhere when they were kids, finding every hiding hole, and Bucky must have scouted the area for others when he first arrived. It was what Steve would have done in his situation. Even if his memories had been too fragmented to be useful when he first arrived, he'd been drawn to the area in the middle of his confusion. 

Steve could see that Bucky's old memories were slowly starting to break through whatever had been done to him. It was there in his eyes, even if he couldn't put it into words yet. So if he was working on a combination of instinct and fuzzy recollection, then maybe he'd retreated to the place he remembered most clearly. The place he'd spent the most time and where, Steve hoped, he'd been happiest.

It was where Steve had been happiest, anyway. When he needed comfort or to escape something terrible happening around him, this was where he'd always gone in his mind.

Steve looked up at the cottages, mirror images of each other sitting in their overgrown gardens under the gathering dusk. He'd forced himself to wait, to help Mrs Cooper around the pub and act normally, so that nobody would start to ask difficult questions. A letter arriving from London and Steve suddenly disappearing within minutes of reading it wouldn't be a secret for long.

He'd bided his time and slipped out just after the pub opened, which wasn't so far outside his usual habits that Mrs Cooper looked at him oddly.

Now he was here, and he wasn't sure what to do next. His first instinct was to find the key and let himself into Bucky's old cottage. That was where he was sure Bucky had holed up. There was no sign of anyone inside, not so much as a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney, but all of Steve's instincts told him Bucky was inside.

Except Bucky would probably bolt the moment he heard Steve at the door, which was exactly what Steve wanted to prevent.

After a minute of contemplation, he went up the other path and got the key out from under its usual rock. The cottage was dark inside, but Steve still knew it well enough to navigate by feel. He hopped the creaky stair and ducked his head as he entered the room under the eaves. He'd taken the candlestick from his nightstand, but he left it in his pocket as he carefully walked across the room.

His shoes scuffed on the bare boards and the bed creaked as he sat down. For a while he sat in silence, ears straining to catch any hint of movement on the other side of the wall.

There was a sound that might have been the quiet hiss of tiny pistons or a cough. Steve waited.

Eventually he said, softly, "I know you're there."

The reply took so long, he started to think Bucky wouldn't answer. "What do you want?"

"To warn you," Steve said. "I have a friend who has contacts in the government. Apparently some Russians were picked up in Portsmouth on Saturday."

"They're coming."

"Maybe. She doesn't think they got all of them."

"She." The voice was flat, emotionless. Too flat, as though the speaker was working hard to make it sound that way. "Peggy."

A surge of hope made Steve sit up straighter. "Yes, Peggy. You remember?"

"I remember...letters. I think."

"We wrote to each other all the time after you joined up. Kept on writing even after I signed up with the Fleet." Steve smiled. "Sometimes we sent three letters in a week. It seemed so strange that you weren't there to talk to every day about everything we'd done. After you went to Africa, it always took so long for letters to get to you."

"We used to talk through this passage," Bucky said.

"Yes! And we'd crawl through it so we could..." Steve paused and his face felt strangely warm. Why was he blushing at those memories now? "We'd keep talking after everyone thought we'd gone to sleep. Sometimes--a lot of times--we fell asleep before we crawled back."

"I slept on your bed."

"You did. More often than I slept on yours, anyway."

"You always got cold in the winter."

"And you said it was easier to get warm with two under the blankets." Steve paused before adding, "You remember."

There was a soft sigh. "More every day."

"That's great," Steve said, heaving a sigh of his own. "Really great, Buck."

"Why?"

Steve spluttered for a moment, trying to find an answer, but all he could think to say was, "Because I missed you." He swallowed and tried again. "Because I missed you, and I want my friend back."

"I've done bad things, Steve. Really terrible things."

"I know. Peggy showed me a file."

"Peggy."

There was a note in Bucky's voice that Steve hadn't heard before. A hard, unhappy note.

"Peggy's a good person," Steve said. "A good friend. She risked a lot passing me that file. I know you've never met her--"

"I saw her once," Bucky said.

Steve waited, but Bucky didn't continue. Something creaked on the other side of the wall. It sounded like someone moving on the bed that was a twin to Steve's. He shuffled along the bed until his shoulder was level with the edge of the narrow passage, telling himself that it was just so he could hear better.

"When did you see her?" Steve prodded eventually.

"At the hospital."

"Hospital?"

Bucky's response took a long time to come. "The newspaper listed where you were. I knew your face, but I didn't know why. I wanted to see you, figure out what you'd been, so I went to the hospital. A pretty girl was sitting by your bed, holding your hand all friendly-like. She looked like something out of one of those magazines the girls read, wearing expensive frocks and one of those big hats. The doctor called her Lady Carter. I looked her up after. She was your Peggy."

"She's never been my Peggy."

"Didn't seem like it from where I was standing."

"Are you jealous?"

"No."

Steve chuckled, which took him by surprise. "She was never my anything. If you remembered all the letters right, you'd remember that."

"Guess I'm not remembering all of them yet, then."

"You really came to the hospital when I was unconscious?" Warmth spread through Steve's chest. "You did that?"

"I didn't know who you were," Bucky said. "Seemed like the best way to find out. Except you were unconscious and your chart didn't tell me anything I couldn't read in the newspaper."

"You stayed long enough to read my chart," Steve said.

"Maybe."

"How much do you remember now?"

"More than yesterday, not as much as I might remember next week," Bucky said. "I wish that I could forget some things."

"What kind of things?"

"Things I've done." Bucky paused. "Things I didn't do, but should have."

"Oh." Steve thought for a long minute, hardly daring to ask more. His heart seemed to be hammering too hard in his chest. "What should you have done?"

"I remember the summer before I left," Bucky said. "Parts of it, anyway. The important parts, maybe. And I remember we never talked about any of it."

"I didn't think you wanted to."

"I didn't think you did."

"Idiot. I didn't know what I wanted."

"I didn't know what we were doing."

Steve smiled. "I don't think either of us did, back then."

"It doesn't matter now, anyway. Does it?" Bucky paused, before adding, "Not when I've done all those things. Your file can't tell you everything. Nobody knows everything. _I_ don't know everything I've done. They...made some of the memories go away. I've got gaps. Not just all the shit I can't remember from...before...but newer stuff. Time I should remember."

Steve swallowed hard. There was more pain in Bucky's voice than he knew what to do with. If they'd been in the same room, he might have tried to touch Bucky, pulled him into a hug and tried to absorb some of the hurt that way. Sharing it had to make it easier to bear.

As he couldn't do that, all he could do was try to choose his words carefully. "None of that was you. Peggy said they've been experimenting with ways to change people's minds, turn them into things they're not. Make them do things they wouldn't do. That doesn't make you responsible for all if it."

"I pulled the trigger."

"They programmed you to do it," Steve said. "If they told you to do any of it now, would you?"

The pause this time was the longest yet. Steve forced himself to sit still and wait.

Eventually, Bucky's voice came, sounding tired and miserable. "I don't know. I really don't know."

"But I know," Steve said.

He couldn't fit through the narrow passage anymore, but he could put his arm through and try to reach Bucky. All he wanted was to show Bucky that he wasn't afraid; that he had faith in Bucky, even if he didn't have faith in himself yet. Steve didn't know whether Bucky would even see his hand reaching through, but the touch of cold metal against his fingers gave him hope. 

Bucky's hand was unexpectedly gentle as he curled his metal fingers around Steve's. He could have crushed them with barely a thought, Steve had seen that demonstrated clearly enough last night, but he didn't. Steve tightened his grip and the metal warmed against his palm slowly.

"Can you feel anything?" Steve asked.

"Pressure, a little," Bucky said. "Nothing like a real hand. We never did this, did we?"

"Hold hands?" Steve chuckled. "No, we never did this."

"We kissed, but we never held hands," Bucky said. He wasn't laughing, but there was a note in his voice that Steve knew from the old days. Bucky was smiling crookedly. "What the hell kind of thing were we doing?"

"We pretended we were practicing for girls," Steve said. "I guess neither of us thought that holding hands was an important part of the practice."

"But we kissed every night for a whole summer. Fuck, we were dumb back then."

"We were sixteen, and I sure as hell didn't know that kissing boys didn't have to be just practice for kissing girls."

"I can't remember what I thought back then." A pause, and then, "I don't know what I was thinking when I kissed you last night. Or before that."

"You don't?"

"It's not like I planned it. Not either time," Bucky said. "I didn't know I was going to do it until I did."

"That's nothing new."

"Guess it isn't."

It didn't feel strange to sit quietly for a while, holding onto Bucky's metal hand and listening to the sound of his breathing. Steve rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. An owl hooted softly outside, the sound carrying through the tiny window that had always had a gap in the frame. There were some places in the world that never seemed to change, and that was comforting in an odd way. 

Steve wasn't the same man who had left the village years ago to find his own adventures, and neither was Bucky. He'd sometimes wondered what would have happened to them if they'd stayed here. If they'd settled down and become a part of this life where everyone followed the path set in front of them: birth, marriage, death, all within the same tiny area.

"Do you think we'd have been happy if we'd stayed here?" he asked.

There was a soft snort from the other side of the passage. "Probably not. We left, didn't we? Nobody forced us out; I remember that much."

Steve smiled. "I guess so."

"Why did you come back here, anyway?"

"For you, in a way. An old friend asked me to track down the Winter Soldier for him. I wasn't expecting he'd turn out to be you."

Bucky's fingers twitched, pressing hard against Steve's hand for a moment, before slowly relaxing. "Why does he want me?"

"He thinks you're dangerous."

"I am."

"He trusts my judgement about you. Bucky, there are people out there who can help you, if you're willing to come back with me. People who'll help you to get your head straightened out, maybe even find you a place to be after it's all done."

"Your friend promised you that?"

"Peggy did," Steve said. "She wouldn't lie to me about that."

"What happens if I don't want their help?"

Steve pursed his lips, but didn't say anything. His silence said everything Bucky needed, though, because after a moment he heard a long sigh and a soft thump, as though Bucky had knocked his head back against the wall.

"I'll be there every step of the way," Steve said.

"Sure you will," Bucky said, a thread of bitterness weaving through his voice.

"I will." Steve squeezed Bucky's hand as tightly as he could, hoping that Bucky could sense the pressure and know what it meant. "That's a promise, Bucky. I'll be there whatever they do, wherever you have to go. I'm not leaving you again."

"I want to believe that."

"I know."

Silence fell again, a comfortable quiet that shouldn't have felt so easy when the man on the other side of the wall was still half-broken and could easily shatter Steve's arm if he wanted to. Hell, Bucky could probably punch through the wall if he wanted to, but he wouldn't. Steve didn't know much about the man Bucky had become, but he knew that much.

And more importantly, he trusted that there was enough of the Bucky that he'd known left, that it wouldn't happen.

Steve didn't mean to fall asleep there. His arm was stretched out uncomfortably, and he was sitting propped up against a wall, on a bed that had been worn and hard ten years ago. Despite everything, though, he drifted to sleep and didn't wake up until the jubilant sound of birds greeting the dawn echoed through the room.

Bucky had gone, but there was still a ghost impression of metal against his hand. His skin felt chilled, as though it hadn't been exposed to the air for long. Steve's neck and shoulders ached from the awkward position he'd slept in, and he had to stretch carefully to relieve some of the tension. He was rubbing his hand, trying to ease some of the tingles from being stretched out for so long, when a scrap of paper fluttered out from under his cuff.

Steve took it over to the tiny window and peered at it in the dim light. The writing was shaky, childishly formed, and it seemed to have been written with a pencil that had snapped twice during construction of the short message. He read it twice anyway, and put it in his pocket when he'd finished.

Bucky wasn't running away anymore.


	9. Chapter 9

_16th May, 1905, Duscombe_

Steve went for a short run, just a couple of miles, so that he could arrive back at the pub looking sweaty and out of breath, like he'd been out early instead of having spent the night in a cottage with his...he wasn't sure what to call Bucky right now.

Friend didn't cover all the facets anymore. It hadn't for longer than he'd realised.

The exercise loosened up muscles that had stiffened due to the awkward position he'd slept in. His legs seemed to eat up the ground faster than they ever had before. It was exhilarating, amazing, and he was almost laughing when he hurdled the wall around the pub garden and trotted to a stop at the back door.

He wasn't sure Mrs Cooper believed him about the early run, but her smile only held a hint of a smirk as he jogged upstairs to wash and change into a clean shirt. There was a knock just as he was buttoning it up, and he opened the door to find Mrs Cooper standing outside with two envelopes in her hand. A frown was pulling her brows together as she held them out.

Steve recognised Peggy's handwriting on the larger envelope, dark pen on a familiar heavy, cream paper. The other one had a hastily scrawled address on the outside, and it barely weighed anything in his hand.

"The boy said it came through in the middle of the night," Mrs Cooper said, "but they didn't find anyone to bring it out to us until now."

The stamp of the General Post Office stood out in one corner and the thin, single sheet inside the envelope almost seemed too fragile in Steve's hand. He read it twice, but the words made no sense. He would need to decode it.

Mrs Cooper pursed her lips. "I could strangle that Ainford Post Master, keeping this back from you so long."

"It's not his fault," Steve said absently. "He didn't know it might be urgent."

"They talked about bringing the telegraph out to us once," Mrs Cooper said. "But how many people in this place receive telegrams more than once in a lifetime? The equipment would sit in a corner somewhere, picking up dust."

"There's no harm done," Steve said, hoping desperately it was true.

She nodded curtly, lips still too tight, and turned away. Steve very carefully, very gently, closed the door and paused with his hand on the latch. He'd felt so hopeful only a couple of hours ago. Everything was starting to work out. He was going to be able to get Bucky back, really back, and nobody would ever be able to take him away again.

A tiny, irrational part of him wanted to crumple up the pages in his hand and pretend he'd never seen them. Go back to the night before, sitting in the darkness listening to Bucky's voice, and never leave that moment.

He took the envelopes to the tiny desk in the corner of his room and painstakingly decoded them. The telegram came first, and then Peggy's letter. When he'd finished, he sat back and stared at the words for a while without seeing them. He needed to start planning, figuring out where they'd go next, but all he could do was stare at the terse words Peggy had sent and try to calculate how many hours he'd lost.

Too many.

That thought was what spurred Steve into action. He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and spent a few precious minutes constructing and encoding a message. Peggy's letter, the telegram, and the rough working he'd done went into the hearth, and he burned them until they were fine ash. Packing a bag with everything he thought he'd need didn't take long; he hadn't brought much with him in the first place.

He didn't hesitate before pulling on his flying jacket and hanging his goggles around his neck. Airship crews had never carried guns as standard--too much danger of a stray shot igniting the gas--but they'd never been completely unarmed. His fastened his utility belt under his jacket, feeling the familiar weight of two knife hilts pressing against his skin through his shirt. 

The jacket reached his thighs and hid the belt from view after he did up the buttons. As he slung his bag over his shoulder, Steve caught a glimpse of himself in the tiny mirror above the washbasin.

He almost looked like his old self. Like Captain Rogers of the _HMAS America_ , heading out to fight pirates and protect innocent farmers and fishermen.

Except Bucky wasn't an innocent farmer. He was an assassin, a man who shouldn't need his protection. A man who might be able to fight his way out of the trap closing in around them on his own, but who Steve was going to stand shoulder to shoulder with every step of the way.

Steve nodded to his reflection and walked out, closing the door behind him.

***

Mrs Cooper was polishing the bar when he clattered into the room, his heavy boots sounding too loud on the flagstones. She looked up sharply and dropped the rag, her eyes suddenly suspiciously damp.

"What have you got yourself into, my dear?" she said.

Steve smiled and shrugged, trying to project calm easiness. "Nothing much."

She lifted an eyebrow, looking him up and down, and probably taking in details Steve hadn't even thought about. "You don't look like a man up to nothing."

"I'm going to be away for a day or two," Steve said. "Don't worry about me."

"Is this to do with whatever's been taking you out most nights since you got here?"

"In a way."

"What do you need me to do?"

Steve sighed, relieved. He hadn't wanted to ask for her help, but when it was offered, he wouldn't say no. At least if she'd volunteered, he could try to pretend not to feel any guilt.

"I need you to hold a letter for me," he said. "If someone comes here asking after me, you should give it to them."

Mrs Cooper narrowed her eyes. "Who should rightfully have this letter?"

"Anyone who--"

She crossed the room in a few short strides and caught his chin between strong fingers. It was impossible to look away when she had him in such a tight grip. "Steve Rogers, don't lie to me. You've written to someone. Someone who's coming for you. Who is it? I don't want it falling into the wrong hands."

Steve grasped her wrist, tugging her hand away from his face and folding it over between his larger ones. "You mustn't put yourself in any danger. If someone wants to know where I am, it's all in this letter. Just give it to anyone who asks."

"Your mother would never forgive me if I sent someone on your trail," Mrs Cooper said. "Let an old lady make her own choices in this. Who has a right to this letter?"

There was a stubborn light in her eyes, and Steve realised that arguing was futile. All it would do was delay him more, and he needed to get to Bucky.

"Peggy Carter," he said. "Lady Carter."

Both of her eyebrows shot towards her hairline this time. "You have been mixing with some high and mighty people."

"She's a good woman," Steve said. "She'll be here...probably by this afternoon, at the latest. When she comes, give her the letter. But if anyone else gets here first--"

"You let me worry about that," Mrs Cooper said. "I'll make sure this gets to your Peggy Carter. She'll bring help for whatever trouble you're in?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll make sure she gets this."

He ducked and kissed her cheek quickly, breathing in the scent of yeasty beer and lavender that seemed to be a part of her. "Thank you."

Mrs Cooper hugged him tight for a long moment, and scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hand when she released him. "Get out of here. Be safe."

"I'll try," Steve said.

"You'll do more than try, my boy."

He nodded and left.

***

It didn't seem likely that anyone would be watching the cottages yet, but Steve wasn't taking a chance. All he knew about the men coming for them was that they'd been sent by the ones who had tortured and changed Bucky, even if they hadn't personally done the deeds. They might not have known who Bucky was when they first got him, maybe not even when he disappeared from their care, but they had to have learned by now. Someone had probably dug into his past, found out where he'd come from before he joined the army. They would know where he'd spent his childhood, and eventually they'd work out that he'd gone to ground in his childhood home.

The cottages weren't safe anymore.

Steve knew all the back routes around the village, though, so it didn't take him long to get to the back gardens without having to set foot on the road. He stayed in the shelter of the trees screening the gardens from fields, watching everything until he felt sure nobody was out there.

He sprinted across the overgrown patch of scrubby grass, but nothing happened. No shots rang out, nobody shouted. The quiet chirping of birds continued undisturbed.

Steve put a hand on door knob, and he hesitated. Bucky's short note had said that he would be back, but would Steve be welcome here? Talking through the passage between their old bedrooms was one thing; talking face to face again might be completely different.

Or Bucky might not have come back from wherever he'd retreated to. It was possible that Bucky had decided to run after all.

The shaky, determined handwriting hadn't looked like the kind of note a man wrote when he intended to lie. Bucky could have just disappeared. Instead, he'd taken the time to write a message even though holding a pencil and forming letters was clearly something he hadn't done for a long time. Maybe not since the last letter he'd written from Africa, before someone stole most of his memories and turned him into something else.

Steve squared his shoulders and knocked. The rhythm of the old code they'd used as children, rapping on the wall to let each other know the coast was clear, came back without having to think. He held his breath, hoping that was a memory Bucky had recovered, and sighed gratefully when he heard the bolt scrape back. The door only opened a little, but when Steve pushed, it swung back without interference, so he stepped inside and closed it behind him.

Bucky was standing by the kitchen table, staring down at a map that looked worn almost through the paper at the creases. His long tangled hair hid his face, and he'd covered his metal hand with a leather glove.

"Bucky?" Steve said.

There was no response.

"We need to get out of here," Steve said. "Peggy sent a message."

"I haven't finished my mission," Bucky said. "I haven't found it."

"Found what? What was your mission?"

Bucky looked up, shaking his hair back so that Steve could see the confusion in his eyes. "I have to find...it's...I have a mission."

Steve took a step forward, waited, and moved again when Bucky didn't show any sign of backing away. He kept going until he was within arm's reach, but he didn't try to touch. "Your mission is over now, Buck. It's been over for a while. It's time to take shelter until Peggy can get to us with backup."

"Backup?" Bucky frowned. "What's going on?"

"The Russians are closing in," Steve said. "Peggy sent me a warning. They've got people in the area and they're going to find us. We've got to get out of here, go somewhere they don't know about."

"How do they know about this place?"

"We grew up here," Steve said. "They didn't know who you were when they first...got you." He couldn't make himself say "bought". Chickens were bought, not people. Not Bucky. "They must know now. Peggy says they're coming for you and I believe her. But she's bringing help; we just have to wait it out until she gets here."

"I can stop them," Bucky said, voice flat. "They can't take me if I don't want them to."

The rest of the thought went unspoken, but Steve heard it anyway and his chest ached with it. Bucky wouldn't let them take him again.

And Steve couldn't let Bucky go. Couldn't watch him die and go through that bleak awfulness again, this time having to watch Bucky die over and over in his head. It had been bad enough when all he'd had was a letter and too much imagination.

He took a chance, reaching out to rest a hand on Bucky's flesh and blood arm. Warmth seeped through the leather of Bucky's jacket, into Steve's fingers. Bucky glanced down, but didn't shrug him off. 

"I'm not leaving you to them," Steve said. "We're in this together, to the end of the line."

Bucky shook his head jerkily. "No. You shouldn't--"

"I'm not going anywhere without you. This isn't your fight alone anymore."

A muscle twitched in Bucky's jaw and his lips tightened. Steve waited, watching Bucky consider and discard a dozen plans before he finally gave in.

"You always were a stubborn bastard," Bucky said, one corner of his mouth lifting for a moment in something that might almost have been a smile. "I don't remember everything, but I do remember that."

"No worse than you," Steve said. His smile was real, and he felt so light he almost thought he could float. "Actually, you were always a lot more stubborn than me. You could out-stubborn a donkey."

"My grandma said that," Bucky said.

"Yes, she did." Steve tightened his fingers around Bucky's arm. "Stubborn and contrary, that's what she called us."

"Just before she threatened us with that big wooden spoon of hers."

"We'd usually done something to deserve it."

"That pie we stole," Bucky said. "We definitely deserved it for that pie."

"It was a good pie."

Bucky nodded. "I haven't eaten pie like that in...forever."

"You remember," Steve said.

"I remember pie."

"You're remembering more every day." Steve wished he had a pie right there on the table, so he could feed it to Bucky until it unlocked more memories. "That's a good thing, a really good thing. You can't stop it now."

Bucky glanced down at Steve's hand again and something flickered in his eyes that Steve couldn't read yet. An emotion he hadn't seen there before, even though he'd always thought he'd seen every emotion Bucky could have.

When Bucky raised his metal hand, Steve didn't flinch. He let it settle against his neck, metal hard through the leather, and he didn't resist when Bucky tugged him forward slowly. Their lips met, and Steve sighed into the kiss. It felt like a missing part of himself slotted into place as he closed his eyes and leaned into Bucky's touch. A part that he hadn't even known he should miss, because it had been gone for so long.

He opened his mouth when Bucky's tongue licked the seam of his lips, warm air puffing across his cheek as Bucky sighed. There was no fire in this kiss, no desperate need, but it consumed him anyway. Wrapping his arms around Bucky, pulling him close, was so easy that Steve couldn't stop himself. He only realised a moment after he'd done it that it might be a bad idea, but all Bucky did was dig his fingers into Steve's neck to hold him in place.

Steve lost track of time, just like he'd always done when they were younger, because kissing Bucky had always sent every thought out of his head. They kissed until they were breathing too hard, and then Steve couldn't pull away completely, but had to keep brushing his lips over the heavy stubble at the corner of Bucky's jaw. It was weirdly prickly, but even that felt exactly right.

When his brain started to function again, Steve kept his face buried in Bucky's neck for a long minute so he didn't have to look into Bucky's eyes. He wasn't sure what he was afraid of, but he thought it was probably the same thing he'd been afraid of ten years ago.

It was Bucky who pulled back, patting Steve's arm and pressing a kiss to his cheek before stepping away from him.

"What's the plan?" he asked. "I'm assuming you've got a plan, and we're not just running until they catch us."

Steve cleared his throat, mind still half in the post-kiss daze. "The cottage on the edge of the moor."

"It's not defensible."

"But nobody knows about it except us." Steve smiled. His lips felt warm and swollen. "They'll find the village, but they'd need to know the area like we do to find that place. It'll take them time, and that's all we need right now."

Bucky seemed to consider carefully before nodding. "Good logic. How will Peggy find us when she brings the cavalry?"

"I've got a friend helping us on that," Steve said. "She'll find us."

"Then we'd better move out," Bucky said. "That's a lot of ground to cover, and we'll need to stay off the road."

"I'm ready when you are."

***

It was early afternoon by the time they reached the cottage on the edge of the moor. Steve's legs and lungs were burning. It was the furthest he'd run since before the _America_ went down, and even all the short breaks they'd taken so Bucky could check their surroundings--an excuse Steve didn't buy for a second, although he was grateful--hadn't given him enough time to completely catch his breath before they were off again.

He wasn't sure how he felt about Bucky looking out for him, trying to keep him from getting too exhausted. It was what they'd done back when they were kids. Bucky must be remembering this was the way that Bucky and Steve worked, despite all the gaps he still had in his memory. That had to be a good thing.

Except Steve wasn't a frail, sickly kid anymore. And he'd never wanted to be a burden, even back then; he'd always fought to be treated just like Bucky. It had been the one thing they'd argued about over and over.

Bucky carried a heavy pack all the way from Duscombe, and he refused to let Steve redistribute any of the gear into his own bag. Somehow, he ran the entire distance with the pack bouncing against his back, and he barely looked winded when they stopped in the trees behind the cottage.

A rational corner of Steve's mind pointed out that he probably wouldn't have been able to keep up if he'd been carrying his share. Maybe if he had another month or two of running and training, maybe then he would have been able to manage it. But right now, running this distance over rough ground was more than anyone had expected he'd be able to do when he woke up in hospital.

They approached the cottage from the back, which confirmed once and for all that Steve had been right about Bucky having an alternate route in. It led through a thick patch of stinging nettles, but as he was wearing heavy trousers and kept his hands raised above the leaves, they didn't hurt him. It was definitely a much easier approach than the brambles at the front.

Of course, to anyone who couldn't recognise them or wasn't dressed suitably, they'd be almost as bad as the thorns. Maybe worse. There was nothing like nettle stings for making a body feel miserable.

Bucky examined the back door and made a low, satisfied sound at whatever he found there.

"You booby trapped the door after you abandoned it?" Steve asked.

Bucky shrugged. "I knew you'd already found the front door. If I had to come back for some reason, I wanted to be able to tell whether anyone had found this one. Looks like nobody did. Or nobody tried to use it, if they did find it."

"I didn't find it until I was inside," Steve said.

"But you weren't looking that hard."

"True." Steve frowned. "How did you know that?"

Bucky shoved the door open and gestured for Steve to go ahead of him. "I was watching."

"I didn't see you."

"I'm good at not being seen when I don't want to be."

It took Steve's eyes a minute to adjust to the dim interior. Bucky closed the door and pushed past him, clearly used to navigating through the darkness by memory and touch. It was a sign that he'd been living here for months, until Steve found him and he started running. Steve tried not to feel guilty about that.

In the kitchen, Bucky put his pack down on the table with a metallic clatter. Steve waited while he examined the tiny window over the sink and peered up the chimney. He wasn't sure what Bucky was looking for, but he seemed satisfied.

"I'm going to check around," Bucky said. "Make sure everything is secure."

"I'll be here," Steve said.

He tracked Bucky's footsteps into the front room, heavy boots thumping against the flagstone, and listened as Bucky paused occasionally before moving onto his next security point. He didn't go upstairs, but Steve had noticed the last time he was here that the wooden steps were rotten. The floor up there was probably rotten, too, so nobody would be coming in that way unless they wanted to risk falling through and breaking their ankles.

"This place isn't defensible," Bucky said, when he came back.

"The cottage in Duscombe wasn't, either," Steve said. "This place is going to be slightly harder to get into than that, at least."

Bucky shrugged. "Doesn't matter, if they bring enough guns with them."

"You think they'll do that?"

"I think whoever is coming for me won't be taking any chances," Bucky said. "They'll be armed with everything they can carry."

"They probably had to abandon most of what they brought when Peggy's people found them in Portsmouth."

"So they'll buy new stuff. That won't take them long."

"How do you know?"

Bucky opened the pack he'd been carrying, revealing an array of weapons that would have made Dum Dum Dugan green with envy. "Because I got them easily enough. It can't be that much harder to find this stuff out here than it was in London."

Steve stared at the pile of rifles, pistols, shotguns, and... "Are those grenades?"

A small smile tugged at the corners of Bucky's mouth. He almost looked proud. "You never know when they'll be useful."

"You've got enough artillery there to...to..." Steve trailed off, unable to think of a good comparison. He waved a hand, taking in the guns and the cottage in one vague gesture. "What did you think you'd need all this for? You can't shoot five pistols at the same time!"

"But I can line them up and keep shooting without reloading for a while," Bucky said. "Same with everything else."

"I hadn't thought about it that way," Steve said slowly.

"You know how to fire any of this stuff?" Bucky asked.

"I've been trained. I didn't have much practice."

"I thought you saw some action."

"I did." Steve shrugged. "We don't use projectile weapons on an airship. Too much risk to the envelope. Would you want hot lead flying around potentially flammable gases?"

"I guess not."

"We did most of our close fighting with knives. Or flame throwers, we had a few of those on board as well. But most of the time we used knives."

Bucky's eyebrows lifted. "Flame throwers?"

"I'll show you some day."

"I'm going to hold you to that." Bucky pulled a rifle out of his pack and held it for a long moment before throwing it to Steve. "Here, catch."

Steve caught it instinctively. "Do you have a plan?"

"Divide everything up. You take the back, I'll take the front. We'll hold them off for as long as we can. I'm going to set up a few surprises out there."

"What kind of surprises?"

The smile Bucky sent him was cold and vicious, nothing Steve had ever seen before from him. "The kind that'll make sure we know they're coming. Loudly."

"What if Peggy's people get caught in them?"

"Then we'll know she's here, too."

"Bucky--"

"I won't set anything painful," Bucky said. "Just noisy. Enough to startle anyone trying to creep up on us and give us a warning that they're coming."

"Alright," Steve said, nodding thoughtfully. "I trust you not to hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it."

Bucky's lips twisted unhappily. "You're a fucking idiot, then. You shouldn't trust me."

"I can't help it."

Bucky glared at him for a long, uncomfortable minute, before ducking his head to rummage around in his pack. His hair hid his face again, but there was a rough hitch to his voice. "I guess that means one of us trusts me."

"It's a place to start."

Steve couldn't see what Bucky pulled out of the pack and concealed in his pockets. He wasn't sure he wanted to, either.

"What can I do?" he asked instead.

Bucky nodded to the pack. "Get everything ready in here. You know how to load all these, don't you?"

"I didn't have much practical experience, but I know what I'm doing."

"Good."

He left without a word, and Steve sighed. This was a side of Bucky that he'd never seen before, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. Part of him was dismayed at how easily Bucky could slip on the cool ruthlessness that he'd been trained into when they made him the Winter Soldier.

Another part of him found Bucky's military efficiency unexpectedly attractive. For a moment, he wondered how he might have felt if he'd seen Bucky in action before he was changed.

He probably would have fallen for Bucky just as hard.

***

By the time Bucky returned, Steve had set up the best defensive nests he could manage in the available time and space. The front room was easy enough: he carried half the weapons in there, checked everything was loaded, and lined it all up within easy reach of the single, small window. The glass had been smashed--or stolen--a long time ago, and some of the boards covering it had fallen away, leaving gaps that anyone could shoot through easily enough. Steve barricaded the door with a heavy bench that had been resting drunkenly in one corner since the days he and Bucky played in there. It didn't matter that it was missing one leg when he tipped it on its side and shoved it up against the door.

The bench wouldn't slow a determined man down much, but even the smallest bit of delay might help. 

The kitchen stretched across the whole of the back of the cottage, and it was more difficult to arrange. The heavy table could be pushed up against the door after Bucky returned, but there was a stone sink under the small window that made it an awkward location to shoot from. Both of the shutters were rotten and crumbling, and the hinges had rusted into place long ago, so they couldn't be closed even if they'd been sound. The thick glass was embedded in lead latticework, which was probably the only reason it was mostly intact. Smashing out a couple of small panes took more force than Steve anticipated.

Whoever took up a station in the kitchen would have to stand with the sink digging into their thighs and try to steady their aim through a window two feet away. Nobody would be able to throw grenades from this location, unless they took the chance of opening the door to do it.

Steve had no intention of opening the door once they were sealed inside. Hopefully Bucky wouldn't try it either.

He was pacing around the kitchen when Bucky came back. There were a few dried leaves caught in Bucky's hair, and Steve had already reached out to tug them free before he thought about what reaction the gesture might get.

Bucky tensed, but he didn't shy away. His wary gaze almost felt like a physical weight on Steve's skin as he carefully pulled the leaves out and let them fall to the floor.

"Is that all of them?" Bucky asked.

Steve carefully combed his fingers through Bucky's hair, catching in the knots and tangles and working them free. He wondered what Bucky would look like with his hair washed and combed. All his memories of Bucky had been with shorter hair, forever escaping from his attempts to comb it flat.

"I think that's it," Steve said, when he couldn't pretend there were any more leaves to search for.

Bucky nodded once, but he didn't move away as Steve expected him to. He cocked his head a little instead, and Steve wished he could see Bucky's eyes. It might have been easier to figure out what he was thinking.

Then again, based on previous experience, maybe not.

"Is that your old uniform?" Bucky asked. He flicked Steve's goggles, still hanging around his neck, with a finger. "I never did get to see you all dressed up in your flying gear."

"It's part of my uniform," Steve said.

"I should have asked you for a photograph," Bucky said. "Thought about it a couple of times, just so I could see what you looked like. Or I think that I thought about it. But it would have been weird if I had. I was supposed to ask for a picture of my girl back home, but all I could ever think about wanting was a picture of you."

"I would have sent one if you'd asked," Steve said. "I sent one to your grandparents. There wasn't anyone else by then."

"I guess there wasn't. You never gave one to Peggy?"

Steve shrugged. "She never asked for one. I carried one in my compass for a while, but that got lost when my ship went down."

"Oh." 

Bucky started to move away, head down, but Steve reached out and touched his elbow and that was all it took. The distance between them closed and he was pulling Bucky against him...or Bucky was pulling him closer...and they were kissing. Hard, punishing kisses that were more teeth and bruising lips than anything else. No gentleness, no finesse, just contact and heat and the ache of everything they'd never had.

Steve wrapped an arm around Bucky's waist and buried his other hand in Bucky's hair, fingers catching in the tangles again, but Bucky only grunted and pushed closer when Steve tugged too hard on a knot.

A hand grasped his hip, tightening almost painfully for a brief moment before releasing and simply resting there. Steve felt warm fingers on the back of his neck, so he knew it had to be Bucky's metal hand on his hip, and the deliberate attempt at gentleness was almost too much. If he hadn't been halfway to drowning in want, Steve thought he might have said or done something embarrassing.

Maybe confessed that he'd been in love with Bucky, without knowing it, since the summer they practiced kissing in his bed.

Steve wasn't aware that he was slowly walking backward--allowing Bucky to walk him that way--until his back hit the wall. He tore his mouth away from Bucky's for a moment, head thumping lightly against the stone, because he couldn't breathe. His chest was too tight with more emotions than he knew what to do with and his heart was racing.

Bucky did something to the skin under his jaw, warm wetness and scraping stubble combining in a way Steve had never expected to find thrilling. It was too much and not enough all at once, and Bucky didn't stop doing it. Steve panted and gasped, vaguely aware that he was making noises he'd probably be embarrassed about later.

When Steve ducked his head and found Bucky's lips again, it was a heady kiss that he fell into and never wanted to leave. Bucky's mouth was too hot, too good, and the fumbling uncertainty of what they'd done all those years ago was gone. He dug his fingers into Bucky's scalp, just to hear the low sound Bucky made at the back of his throat and feel it vibrate against his chest. Bucky sucked on his tongue lightly, and Steve's hips jerked without his control.

That felt so good he had to do it again, grinding up against Bucky's thigh when Bucky thrust his leg into just the right position. He might have carried on, rutting against Bucky and encouraging Bucky to reciprocate, except they were interrupted by a loud bang.

Steve froze with his hand on Bucky's hip and his tongue in Bucky's mouth. He opened his eyes, finding himself looking straight into Bucky's. They were so close that he could see the moment that Bucky shut down and his old Winter Soldier instincts kicked in.

Bucky pushed away, and Steve wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, trying to scrub away the heat still curdling low in his gut by taking away the taste of Bucky's lips. It didn't work, but another explosion did.

"They're here," Bucky said.

"Who?"

"They're not announcing themselves politely, so I don't think it's your Peggy."


	10. Chapter 10

_16th May, 1905, edge of Dartmoor_

Another echoing explosion sent Steve's heart rate rocketing. He couldn't tell where they were coming from, but it sounded like the warnings were coming from every direction Bucky could have set them up in.

"They're surrounding us," Bucky said, confirming Steve's supposition. "Did your friend say how many Russians were coming for us?"

Steve shook his head. "They could have come in through Bristol and Southampton as well, maybe even down in Cornwall. Smuggling used to be a big trade along most of this coast, so they might not have all come in by ports. There are probably still a few fishermen happy to take an extra passenger to an out of the way beach for the right price."

Bucky swore viciously, in languages Steve hadn't even realised he knew.

"How long will it take her to get here?" Bucky asked.

"If she got to Duscombe when she planned, she'll be here by sunset," Steve said. "Hopefully. I guess she can't just march up to a garrison and give orders. There are channels, and transport to arrange."

"And she's a woman trying to tell a bunch of men where to go."

"That, too."

Bucky nodded. "Then we need to hold our ground for a couple of hours. Maybe more. We can do that."

"We can?"

"We've got something they don't," Bucky said with a fierce grin. "We've got stone walls around us. And they can't have brought up too much heavy artillery, not if they wanted to stay subtle."

"They've already been through Duscombe, though," Steve said. "That's the only way they could have known where we are."

An image of Mrs Cooper, beaten and bloody, floated through Steve's mind, and he had to push it away forcefully. He'd told her to give up his letter if anyone asked for it. Surely, if she'd done what they wanted, nobody would have hurt an innocent woman.

He watched Bucky stalk over to the rifles lined up by the stone sink. His metal arm caught Steve's eye, glinting in the dim light.

Anyone who could do that to a man, take away everything he was and turn him into something mindless and cold, probably wouldn't hesitate to hurt an old woman. A cold anger started burning in Steve's gut. The men outside might not be the ones who had hurt Bucky, but they weren't innocent. They knew what they were doing, and they'd probably hurt people in their relentless quest to stop Bucky leaving their control.

"Help me move this," Steve said.

The wooden legs of the table screeched as they scraped over the flagstones, and Steve's heart almost jumped out of his chest at the noise, even though he knew logically that they were a long way beyond hiding now. Steve turned to take up his position in the front room, but Bucky grabbed his wrist, and the warmth of his hand almost burned against Steve's hand.

"Don't get dead," Bucky said roughly. "Not for me."

"I don't plan on dying," Steve said. "Tried it once, didn't like it much."

He wasn't surprised when Bucky kissed him, but the gentleness of it did leave him stunned for a moment. There was no time to do anything about it, though, because a voice shouted something outside the cottage, and Bucky pushed away from him with a muttered curse. 

Steve hurried to the front room and crouched by the window, tugging his airship goggles up over his eyes as he went. He picked up one of the rifles and snugged it against his shoulder the way he'd been taught, pointing the barrel through one of the larger gaps in the boards. He peered intently at the bramble patch and stone wall visible outside. There was no movement out there, but he heard the voice shouting again.

It was a rough, barking tone, and the man was saying something in a language Steve assumed had to be Russian. He wished that someone could translate for him, but Bucky was in the kitchen and he didn't think Bucky would want to translate anyway. After a few more angry shouts, the Russian must have realised that trying to order Bucky to surrender wasn't working.

That was when they started shooting.

The noise was deafening, despite the cottage's thick stone walls. Steve ducked down below the windowsill as the boards above splintered and filled with holes. Bullets ricocheted off the stonework outside, and Steve felt a moment's gratitude for the recent rain, because otherwise the sparks and hot metal would surely have started a fire in tinder-dry grass and thatch.

The gunfire slackened slightly, as though some of the men had paused to reload, and Steve immediately rose up and returned the fire. He didn't even try for accuracy, simply shooting at any dark shapes moving beyond the low stone wall. A sharp cry of pain was his reward, and he felt a thrill of sharp satisfaction. He shot again and again, reaching for the next rifle in the stack each time the one he was using ran out of ammunition instead of spitting fire. There wasn't time to stop and reload; if he allowed the indistinct shapes lurking outside to get in, they'd overwhelm him. He didn't rate the bench highly as a blockage for the door. Not when he'd counted at least five men outside, possibly more.

The shooting outside the cottage suddenly stopped.

Bucky fired one last shot, the boom echoing around the walls, but Steve eased his finger off the trigger carefully. He peeked over the edge of the windowsill, taking in everything with one quick look, but everything seemed quiet. Nothing moved.

Steve cautiously rose up higher, pushing broken fragments of wood out of the way until he had a clear view of everything, but there was still no sigh of anyone.

The sun was dipping low on the horizon, turning the wispy clouds around it pale red and gold. It gave him hope. Peggy and her people might still get here on time. They could even be out there right now, silently taking down their opponents.

Or they might still be in Duscombe, searching for clues about where Steve and Bucky had gone to ground. Mrs Cooper might be dead, the letter long gone, and Steve couldn't remember how much he'd told Peggy about his childhood here.

Steve squinted into the dying light, searching for any sign of movement outside, but everything was still. Too still for his peace of mind. Just because no one was firing at them, that didn't mean nobody was out there.

"Can you see anyone?" he called to Bucky, not daring to leave his post.

"No," Bucky said. "But that doesn't--shit."

There was another brief hail of gunfire from the rear of the cottage, too muffled to be Bucky's, and Steve didn't hesitate before grabbing a pistol and running back there. Part of him screamed that he was leaving them open to attack from the front, but the rest of his instincts were crying out that this was the big assault. Whoever had come for Bucky was coming in through the back.

When Steve ran into the kitchen, he got there just in time to see the door shudder and start to slowly push open. Bucky was busy at the window, taking carefully aimed shots at whoever he could reach with the handguns he had left. His stack of long guns was lying abandoned on the floor, some of the barrels still smoking.

Steve threw all his weight against the kitchen table, trying to push the door shut and hold it as a barricade. It worked for a moment, the door slamming shut on the intruders, but the bolt had been torn off the frame and it couldn't hold.

He didn't leave it, though. His strength, combined with the weight of the table, almost seemed like it would be enough for a while. But then the door shuddered and the silver tip of an axe broke through, sending splinters of wood flying. It didn't take many blows for the axe to chop through the half-rotten oak.

Behind him, Steve heard the front door crash open, bench skidding away and slamming into the wall. He couldn't spare a glance to find out whether it had been a diversion. Someone was pointing a gun through the hole in the kitchen door and he had to duck as they fired at him.

That was all the Russians needed: the moment he shied away from the bullet, they shoved at the door and pushed both Steve and the table out of their way. Steve rolled across the floor as an axe swung down where his head had been. The heavy leather flying jacket protected his shoulders from the worst bruising, but tumbling over a stone floor was still more painful than the wooden boards of his old ship had been.

He was dimly aware that Bucky was fighting, moving with more grace and speed than he'd seen before, even during their fight on the train. Steve couldn't focus on that, though. Not when there was an angry Russian with an axe bearing down on him. He had to roll again to avoid the next strike, and a chip went flying when the axe clanged down on the flagstone. The tiny sliver of rock hit his face, a line of burning pain scoring down his cheek.

Steve scrambled to his feet just in time to grab the haft of the axe during its next downward swing. For a long moment, he struggled with the Russian, pushing back and forth and refusing to release his grip. When the man let go, Steve staggered backwards into the wall behind him, his head cracking against it painfully. He blinked away stars in time to ram the end of the axe's handle into his opponent's stomach as he rushed Steve, and the guy folded immediately. Steve brought the blunt head of the axe down on his skull and he had one Russian unconscious on the floor.

It wasn't enough.

A blow to the side of his head took him by surprise, and Steve barely caught himself against the wall before he fell. His vision went grey at the edges for a moment, but he refused to be beaten. He ducked the next blow and came up swinging. It was clear that none of the intruders were used to combat in close quarters, and Steve used every dirty trick he'd ever learned to stay alive. Kicking and punching, elbows and fist and knees, all used to disable whoever he could get his hands on.

On the far side of the kitchen, he heard Bucky cry out and that only made Steve pull a knife out and fight harder.

The light in the kitchen was growing dimmer as the sun set. Somewhere outside the cottage, Steve heard a distant 'boom' as something set off another of Bucky's alarms. A momentary surge of hope coursed through him, giving him new strength to reach out and slam the handle of his knife against a man's ear, making him howl.

Steve heard someone shout in unaccented English, and he would have sagged with relief if there hadn't been a man trying to gut him with a thing that looked like it used to be a meat hook. 

His relief didn't last. Steve dodged the hook and thrust his knife into the man's shoulder. He screamed and fell, wrenching the knife out of Steve's hand.

Someone shouted in Russian, a short phrase that sounded harsh and grating in Steve's ears. Time seemed to slow as everyone in the kitchen abruptly stopped fighting.

Bucky froze, foot raised over a semi-conscious man's head. There was a man in the doorway, dressed in a non-descript brown suit and hat. He didn't look impressive. His hairline was receding and his thick, fleshy lips were turned down in a frown. He looked like a bank clerk, all neat and precise.

But his eyes were burning as he stared at Bucky. Those eyes were too dark, too intent, and Steve couldn't look away even though he wanted to. This man knew Bucky, it was there in his face, and Steve understood without knowing why that this was the person who had given Bucky commands for all those years.

The handler spoke again, the same commanding Russian phrase. Bucky slowly straightened up and turned, the man he'd almost killed rolling away with a whimper as soon as he could.

Steve wanted to speak, but the words caught in his throat and wouldn't come. All he could do was watch as Bucky took one slow step towards his handler, and then another.

Bucky tilted his head, face blank.

The handler said something in Russian, his frown deepening when Bucky didn't respond. His voice was heavily accented when he said, in English, "Obey me. Kill Captain Rogers. That is your mission now."

Strangely, Steve didn't feel afraid. An unfamiliar sense of calm peacefulness settled over him, pushing away all the anger and fear he'd been filled with a moment ago.

Bucky turned his head, seeming to study Steve for a long moment. His hand--the metal one--reached underneath his leather jacket to pull out a gun. He didn't seem aware that he'd done it for a minute, until he looked down and the gun was there, in his hand.

Movement at the door to the front room caught Steve's eye. Someone was standing there, gun trained on Bucky. The light in that corner was too dim to make out more than a slim shadow and flashes of light glinting off metal, but Steve knew without a doubt that the gun was aimed at Bucky's head.

Bucky transferred his pistol to his flesh and blood hand. He lifted it slowly until the barrel was pointing straight at Steve. Their eyes met and held. Bucky's expression was completely blank, as cold as Steve had ever seen the Winter Soldier look, and his eyes were hidden by shadow and tangled hair.

Steve gave him a small smile and nodded. _Do what you need to, I'm here to the end._

They stayed like that for the longest moment of Steve's life. Somewhere in the background there were people shouting, guns firing, but in the kitchen everything had narrowed down to Steve and Bucky and the pistol.

Bucky's hand shook.

The emptiness was still there in his face when Bucky turned and shot his handler, red blossoming in the centre of his forehead. The man looked so shocked it might have been comical in another place. He sank slowly to his knees and then tipped backwards onto the ground without saying a word.

The silence in the cottage only lasted another moment, another heartbeat, before a chaotic uproar began. Men shouting in English and Russian, warning and defiance too mingled to make sense of. Steve thought he even heard Peggy's clipped tones, but he couldn't spare any attention for her. He was too focused on reaching Bucky, wrapping his arms around Bucky as they both dropped to their knees under the weight of what had happened.

Steve could feel Bucky shuddering, and it might have been tears or it might have been fear, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was holding Bucky as tightly as he could, whispering over and over that everything was going to be fine.

Because it was going to be fine, Steve knew that now. Bucky was free.


	11. Epilogue

_8th January, 1906, London_

Steve's nose was too cold. He burrowed down under the thick pile of blankets and duvets, pressing his frozen nose against the warm skin he found there.

Bucky made a sleepily startled noise and tried to squirm away, but Steve had an arm around his waist and instinctively pulled him closer. In his half-awake state, Steve didn't think about how Bucky might react to that: he simply didn't want to let the body radiating heat and comfort to leave his arms. Back in the summer, Steve wouldn't have been this relaxed. He'd woken up every time Bucky moved, his heart thumping in his chest. It wasn't just because he hadn't shared a bed with anyone for nearly ten years.

There were nightmares. Terrible nightmares where Bucky flailed awake, lashing out at anything within range. Waking up ready to duck was all that had saved Steve from a few nasty punches.

Sometimes it was Steve waking up from nightmares about fire and icy cold water, lungs burning as though he'd almost drowned again.

On the worst nights, they'd both suffered through nightmares and then comforted each other as they came down from the aftermath.

All of that was months ago, though, and if they weren't entirely past it now, at least Steve didn't startle awake at every movement Bucky made anymore. And Bucky didn't wake up flailing and punching if he was disturbed or coming out of a nightmare. Most of the time, anyway.

When Steve pulled Bucky closer and nuzzled his nose against the back of his neck, he just made an indignant noise and sleepily said, "Fuck, your nose is cold."

Steve sighed. "The whole room is cold. We should do something about the fire."

"That would mean getting out of bed."

"It would."

"Feels like it's cold out of bed."

"It is."

"And it's early."

Steve opened one eye and took in the pitch darkness of the room. "It probably is."

"And we don't have to get up for at least an hour."

"Do you even know what time it is?"

"No, but can I can guess really well. I've got one of those internal clocks that knows when it's time to get up."

Steve hummed sceptically. "I'm pretty sure you don't."

"I'm not hungry enough for it to be breakfast time yet, so we've got to have at least an hour or two before it's time to get up. If I was hungrier, it would be nearly breakfast and that'd make it time to get up."

"Your logic is suspect."

Bucky snorted. "Let's see who's got the best logic when we get our first murder case. Bet I solve it before you."

"Bucky..."

"Hey, you know what we could do to make your nose warmer, without getting out of bed?"

Steve was pretty sure he could guess, but he smiled and said, "I have no idea."

Sometimes, he wondered how different everything would have been if they'd just talked back when they were messing around as kids. If either of them had ever tried to ask whether, maybe, the practice wasn't for girls. Hell, if either of them had tried to think about any of it beyond feeling vaguely guilty because it felt so good and they didn't know what they were doing.

Maybe it wouldn't have changed anything. Bucky probably still would have ended up in Africa, Steve would still have joined the Royal Aerial Fleet, and eventually Bucky's commanding officer would have done what he did. But if they'd talked, if they'd figured out their feelings, something about it all might have been different.

Or not. Losing Bucky had been bad enough when Steve had pushed all those other, confusing feelings down and hidden them. If he'd lost Bucky knowing the full extent of everything they felt for each other, how much worse would it have been? Would the pain have dragged him down too far to be useful? There were men and women out there that he'd rescued on that day, using the pain of Bucky's loss, who wouldn't be alive now. The pirates would have continued raiding and assaulting every village and boat out in the Channel Islands, with nobody to stop them. Not for many more months, anyway.

Steve had focused all his pain and rage into that day, his men had followed him, and something good had come out of the heartbreak.

All those thoughts were pushed away when Bucky rolled over and caught Steve's lips in a kiss. The movement let a waft of cold air under the sheets, but Steve didn't care much about that. They'd warm up fast enough.

It was probably a good thing they'd never gone further than kisses when they were sixteen. Steve suspected they wouldn't have been able to keep their hands out of each other's trousers if they had, which would have inevitably led to discovery and then...he didn't like to think about what would have happened after that.

Bucky would still have ended up in the army, but not by choice. And Steve would have been sent somewhere else, with no chance to find the newly-formed Fleet. The place where he'd learned that not everyone hankered for a wife and a dozen children. That there were men out there who felt the way he'd tried to pretend he didn't feel about Bucky.

They lay on their sides, kissing until they were breathless. Bucky had always slept bare-chested, even in the dead of the winter, a fact that Steve didn't mind encouraging now. In the first months after Bucky left the hospital, he'd tried to cover up with an old shirt at all times to hide the scarring and damage to his shoulder. Steve had spent hours, over the weeks, learning the shape and texture of every bit of roughened flesh with his tongue until Bucky relaxed and stopped trying to cover up.

Steve had never told Bucky, but he thought the metal arm was a work of art. If there hadn't been so many bad memories attached to it, he might have confessed that, but he could see in Bucky's eyes that he didn't feel that way. Whoever had made it, though, had put in so many artistic touches--intricately detailed etchings, perfectly shaped gears and joints--that it had to have been one of his finest creations.

Maybe one day they could find someone to build Bucky a new arm. Something beautiful, from the designs Steve had been quietly sketching, but without all those terrible memories attached. They'd need to find a mechanical genius, though, and Steve didn't even know where to begin searching for one.

He put that thought aside and concentrated on Bucky, sliding a hand up his back so gently that Bucky shivered and sighed into his mouth.

They definitely wouldn't have been able to keep their hands to themselves if they'd known how good this could feel when they were sixteen.

Steve kissed a path from Bucky's lips to the underside of his jaw, tasting and nipping at the delicate skin there, just to feel the way Bucky's breath hitched at the sensation.

"Hey, don't go putting marks where I can't hide them," Bucky protested, putting the lie to the words immediately by tilting his head back to give Steve better access.

Steve chuckled. "I'll do my best."

"Our collars aren't that high."

"I'm being careful," Steve said. "Aren't I always?"

Another draft of cold air got in under the covers, as Bucky rolled them over so that Steve was on his back. Steve told himself that it was the sudden chill that made him shiver, and not the thrill of feeling Bucky's body pinning him down. That was probably not something he should say out loud, even though Bucky had to know how much he liked it. His reaction always made it very obvious how much he enjoyed Bucky's weight on his body, after all.

In the darkness, he couldn't see the wicked grin Bucky was probably giving him, but he could hear it in Bucky's voice. "I could stand you to be a little less careful, sometimes."

"But not today," Steve said.

"Maybe when we don't have a new job to start in a couple of hours."

"When is our next day off?"

"I guess we'll find out when we get our schedule."

"Think they'll let us patrol together?"

Bucky sighed. "We need a rule. No talking about work in bed."

"You started it."

"Accidentally. Can we can get back to what we were doing before the work talk started? "

Steve shrugged. "I could be persuaded."

"What'd it take to persuade you?" Bucky asked.

He didn't wait for an answer, sliding down to nuzzle at the skin just above Steve's pyjama jacket, before unbuttoning it so he could trail kisses down Steve's chest. He did it all so smoothly that no unwelcome drafts of cold air entered their warm cocoon.

Steve couldn't restrain a gasp, and his voice sounded shaky when he said, "That-that's a good place to start."

"Rogers, you're too easy," Bucky said, his voice muffled through the covers.

Steve tried to think of a clever retort, but all his thoughts floated away when Bucky's mouth fastened over his nipple. He hadn't even realised he'd like that until Bucky tried it the first time, and Bucky kept finding new ways to make him feel like his skin was on fire. A groan escaped his mouth, even though he was trying to be quiet, because Bucky's hands were as busy as his tongue and it all felt too good.

Better than anything had a right to be, but Steve had made his peace with that a long time ago. He reached for Bucky's shoulders, unable to decide whether he wanted to push Bucky down further or pull him up for another kiss. The metal against his fingers was as warm as Bucky's skin, and Steve stroked a hand down to feel the ridges flexing as he moved.

"You wear too many clothes in bed," Bucky mumbled against his belly.

"It's w-winter," Steve said. He might have been embarrassed about how breathless he sounded, if Bucky hadn't done something very distracting with his tongue at the same time. "I get cold."

When Bucky hummed, his throat was against Steve's cock, and the sensation made Steve arch into it. He heard the muffled chuckle from under the bedclothes, a filthy sound that definitely didn't help his composure.

"Guess I'll just have to look forward to warmer weather, then," Bucky said. "You should think about sleeping naked. Make it easier on me."

"Easier for you to do what?"

Steve didn't get a reply, but he didn't need one. In one smooth move, Bucky pulled down his pyjama trousers and sucked Steve into his mouth. The heat and wetness were incredible against his sensitive flesh, and Steve couldn't hold in a deep groan. He tried to say something, anything, but Bucky was too good at this. Somehow, even though it should have been etched on his mind, Steve was always surprised by how amazing Bucky's mouth and tongue could make him feel.

Steve tried not to thrust up against him and make him choke, but his hips seemed to be moving without his permission. Bucky's metal hand was strong, implacable, when he pressed Steve back to the bed. It would leave finger-shaped bruises, Steve was sure, and that thought made the heat burning in his belly roar higher.

Every sense felt tuned too high, all focused on what Bucky's mouth was doing to him. Steve reached down blindly, searching for something he couldn't vocalise because he couldn't remember how to speak. His fingers tangled in Bucky's hair for a moment, before Bucky tugged his hand away and wove their fingers together. Warm flesh against warm flesh, it was what Steve needed, and he held on tight as Bucky continued to suck and do unspeakably wonderful things with his tongue.

When Steve came, it felt as though his orgasm had been pulled from the soles of his feet. It washed over him in wave after wave. He was aware that he was babbling something, but not what the words were. His heart felt too full, so packed with love and happiness that it had to spill out somewhere.

Everything went a little fuzzy after that, and when he came back to himself, Bucky was kissing his cheek and muttering too softly to be understandable. Steve turned his head and blindly found Bucky's lips, tasting himself there even though Bucky usually protested that he didn't have to.

Bucky didn't protest this time, which felt like some kind of victory Steve couldn't understand yet. He was still feeling too floppy and relaxed to be coordinated, but Bucky seemed content to rock against his thigh for a while until his movements became too frantic. Then Steve pushed his hand down inside Bucky's pyjamas and wrapped his fingers around Bucky's cock, stroking him the way he'd learned would always send Bucky over the edge. It only took a few quick, twisting pulls before Bucky came with a low, almost feral groan.

They lay there for a while, arms wrapped loosely around each other while they waited for heartbeats and breathing to return to normal. Bucky was the first one to move, escaping from the bed for a couple of minutes to turn on gas lamps and stoke up the fire. His skin was cold when he crawled back into bed, and Steve was more than happy to warm him up again.

The room was starting to lose its biting chill when Steve glanced over at the two uniforms hanging in the corner. Brass buttons shone in the firelight down the front of two long, dark blue coats. His old airship goggles hung around the collar on one coat, while Bucky's leather gloves dangled out of the pocket of the other. He'd sent a photograph of them both to Mrs Cooper last week, wearing their uniforms and smiling. Bucky's expression had been slightly closer to a scowl, but it was close enough. Steve had another copy safely tucked away in his sock drawer.

"Are you sure about this?" Steve asked.

Bucky kissed Steve's shoulder and his metal arm tightened around Steve's waist. "Absolutely. I'd follow you to the ends of the earth. A little police work can't hurt me."

"If you're only doing this because I--"

"No," Bucky said sharply. "I'm doing this because...because it's a way to undo some of the bad I did. So don't you go thinking that I'm only doing this for you. I'm doing it for me, too. It just happens that you'll be there at my back the whole time."

"It's where I should have been before."

"Who would've been around to pull me out, if you had been?"

Steve shrugged. He turned his head on the pillow, so that he could see Bucky's eyes. They were dark and serious, but they were Bucky. No sign of the cold anger of the Winter Soldier anymore. "I'll always pull you out."

"I know you will," Bucky said with a crooked smile.

They were quiet again for a while. Steve was thinking about getting up, not relishing the idea of how cold the rest of the tiny flat would probably be, when Bucky lifted his head.

"How long do you think it'll take Fury before he transfers us to his department?" he asked thoughtfully.

Steve stretched up to kiss him. "At least six months."

"That's what I was thinking."

***

Six hours later, Steve and Bucky stood side by side as Inspector Fury stalked past them in a swirl of dark leather. He didn't seem touched by the snow, even though they both had a thin layer building up on their shoulders and the brims of their domed helmets.

Fury shouted over his shoulder, "What are you two waiting for? I'm transferring you to SHIELD, effective immediately, as you can't seem to stay out of trouble anyway."

They exchanged grins and hurried after him, jostling shoulders as they went down the narrow corridor to the room they'd discovered their first strange murder in. Steve tried to feel appropriately sober as he surveyed the crime scene, taking in the rose petals scattered over the bed and the strange colour of the body, but he could feel the smile escaping at the corners of his mouth. He was where he belonged, with the man he belonged with, and the world was exactly as it should be.


End file.
